


the reins of history

by andromeda3116



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Magitek, Multi, Swords & Sorcery, i am just completing the circle, it's already been criticized for basically being a swords-and-sorcery version of star wars, look final fantasy has been borrowing from star wars from word one and especially this one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-01 09:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13292055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromeda3116/pseuds/andromeda3116
Summary: “Pretenses left by the wayside, the Imperial forces resumed their advance toward Aldera. Alderaan’s doom had been decided, and to make resistance at this hour would serve no end. With this foremost in my thoughts, I, to the people of Alderaan:Sons and Daughters of Alderaan, I bid you lay down your arms, and raise songs of prayer in their stead. Prayer for her Majesty Queen Breha, ever merciful, a woman devoted wholly to peace. Prayer, too, for the noble Princess Leia, who, wrought with grief at her kingdom’s defeat, has taken her own life.Know also that Captain Cassian Andor, for incitement of sedition and the assassination of Her Royal Majesty Queen Breha, has been found guilty of high treason and put to his death. They who at this late hour still choose the sword are cut of the same cloth as the Captain: traitors who would lead Alderaan to her ruin.Alderaan’s surrender without terms was soon to follow.”–Memoirs of Marquis Mon Mothma, Chapter 13: the Province of Allies[Or, the Final Fantasy XII AU that nobody asked for but you’re all gonna get.]





	1. prelude

**Author's Note:**

> hi hello yes my name is sarah and i am addicted to fusion fics. i took a hacksaw to the plot of the game and chopped it up into five rough acts, we'll see how this "plotting ahead" and "having an outline" thing go for me. i don't usually do prelude chapters, but with this story being what it is, i decided to go ahead and do one this time.

Cassian had been in the wrong place, at the wrong time. His _intentions_ had been noble, but he'd been too slow.

He’d _meant_ to save the queen.

“Ah, Captain,” a voice murmured, from behind where he was being held, on his knees in Queen Breha’s blood. The knife in her had come off his belt. “Your timing is perfect.” Cassian struggled, and _something_ twitched in the air against his back as the man crouched behind him. “The treaty was a disgrace to Alderaan,” the voice said, very quietly, right up against his ear, and his mouth opened against his will.

“The treaty was a disgrace to Alderaan,” his voice repeated, spitting the words out.

“Queen Breha was a traitor to the throne.”

He bit back against it, but the _power —_  “Queen Breha was a traitor to the throne.”

“A shame,” the man said loudly, as though just entering the room, walking around Cassian to stand over the queen’s body. “Alderaan’s knight protector, turned on her like this. You heard him?” the man went on, and Cassian cast his eyes to the side, to the last of his soldiers stumbling through the door to the throne room: a woman, staggering from blood loss — who had fought and suffered and bled to get here and help him — was now looking at the scene with horror. _No_. “This man, the one you were willing to die for, used you and all of your comrades to get here, for… _this_. I suppose this means there will be no treaty after all. And to think, we _had_ intended to allow you to keep some of your sovereignty, out of respect.”

 _No_.

The word wouldn’t come, his throat now sealed shut. Whatever power the man in black had, to force him to speak and now force him to be silent, was beyond anything Cassian had seen before. 

“Captain —” Mya gasped, dropping to her knees. “Why?”

He couldn’t answer —  _no, I didn’t do this, no, I didn’t want this, no, I am Alderaan’s loyal son, no —_

The world went on around them: two Imperial soldiers began trying to staunch Mya’s bleeding; the man in black directed his soldiers to spread out through the fortress and eliminate all resistant Alderaanian forces; he was dragged away, still trailing his queen’s blood.

The last thing he saw before the world went dark was the betrayal on the dying soldier’s face.

.

Jyn glared up at Marquis Mon Mothma — not even one of their own, Mothma was nothing more than a distant cousin of Prince Bail’s, she ruled over the safe, neutral floating continent of Chandrila, far from the fighting and the loss — as she explained to the city of Aldera that they were now to be part of the glorious empire.

The war took their prince-consort, the treachery of a knight took their queen, and now the princess herself had taken their princess.

With Leia dead, the next in line for the throne was Mothma, and she’d been the one to sign the surrender without terms: _complete_ submission to Palpatine, and dissolution of the throne entirely.

Jyn’s sister had not died for this. Jyn’s mother had not died for this. Jyn’s —

“You can’t kill her,” Bodhi hissed sharply, pulling her away from the streets and the crowd.

“I don’t have to,” she snapped, gesturing at the people, who were beginning to get angry. “I just have to join them. Let me —”

“No!” Bodhi cried, looking around in alarm. “Look, this whole block is surrounded, everyone who gets involved in this riot is gonna get shot or thrown in the dungeons, it’s not worth it!”

“She’s just — standing there,” Jyn spluttered, choking on the words, “ _standing_ _there_ and handing us all over to them — she’ll just go back to her little floating fortress and —”

“You can’t do anything, Jyn!” he insisted, and pulled her once more, sharper, so that she stumbled against him and nearly into a shop. And not a moment too soon: as the din of the voices in the square grew louder, they had almost drowned out the metal clanking of Imperial troopers getting into position.

Gunfire lit up the edges of the riot, which quickly devolved into screaming.

.

“Mothma has announced your suicide, your highness,” General Draven said slowly, and she half-turned to face him, as her hands curled into fists. “It would seem we cannot trust her to aid us after all.”

“We don’t need her,” Leia snarled, and stalked deeper into the hidden waterways underneath her palace.

.

.


	2. act one

_two years later—_

. 

Jyn had never meant to be a thief, but war had wrecked the country and left a lot of people homeless, and people left out on the streets — in disgrace, in disease, in disarray — had few options. Jyn had taken the _other_ one.

Although she’d been born into an affluent family, these days she lived among the outcasts in Lowtown, which had once been the warehouse district but now acted as a tent city to most of Aldera’s displaced poor. There had been stirrings of rebellion there, after the princess’s suicide, but deep into the night, shortly into the occupation, during a state visit for the Emperor's heir, a squadron of troopers had swept in and, with a precision that could only have meant betrayal, killed every single member of the resistance in the district.

Jyn, by virtue of her friends Chirrut and Baze “insisting” that she had to come along with them to meet their friend in the shopping district, was spared.

Chirrut had denied specific knowledge — and he’d been so upset by the deaths that she believed him — but he did admit that he’d had a premonition, that he’d felt the need to get Jyn out of Lowtown that night.

 _I believe the Force willed you to survive this, Jyn_ , he’d said, and she’d tried not to roll her eyes. _It has some purpose for you yet._

Chirrut was like her mother had been: a firm believer in a dying old religion that worshiped some mystical energy that flowed through everyone. She’d looked imploringly to Baze, who had only shrugged, eyes serious.

 _Be careful, little sister,_ was all he had said about it.

Since then, either by circumstance or design, Jyn had been completely cut off from all organized rebellion in the city. No matter what she did or who she talked to, she couldn’t find anyone who could connect her to them — not exactly a surprise, since if there had been any survivors, they would have gone deep underground, but still, she felt useless, just puttering around the city, committing petty theft and causing minor trouble.

She told herself that she was only stealing _back_ from the Imperials who had stolen from them, first. It didn't help much.

Bodhi frowned at her a lot these days, but then Bodhi had found legitimate work in a shop of sundries and thought that Jyn was wasting her talents picking Imperial pockets.

(He wasn’t wrong, but what did it matter?)

“Jyn, we could really use your help at the shop,” he said, keeping an eye out as she rifled through the purse she’d just lifted. It was disappointingly light. “Maz is swamped preparing for tonight’s fete. Apparently the new consul is entertaining more guests than anyone expected, everyone’s run ragged. You know Maz will pay you,” he added nervously, glancing at the coin purse.

“Mm,” Jyn replied, and Bodhi sighed.

“It’s easy work, Jyn, just running wine bottles up to the palace and the like.”

“It doesn’t bother you?” she asked sharply, and he cringed, looking away. “To take them their wine, like good little servants?”

“Having food in my belly does not bother me, no,” he countered, but with some discomfort. “Look, staffing a fete is not the same as — as agreeing with them, or helping them —”

“It _is_ helping them,” she snapped, shoving the purse into her pocket and scowling up at the palace. “That’s exactly what serving them is, is helping them. No, they’re gonna help _me_ ,” she added, and Bodhi ran both hands over his face.

“Don’t tell me you’re planning to break into the palace,” he muttered.

“Of course I’m planning to break into the palace,” she replied, matching his low volume. “I’ve got a key to the vault.”

“I don’t want to know where you got that,” he moaned, then paused. “The _Royal_ vault? Are you sure it’s not a fake?”

“Mm-hmm,” she said. “It came from Chirrut, you know it’s genuine. I’m gonna liberate some of Alderaan’s treasures from their grubby hands while they’re all drunk on _your_ wine.”

“Truly, you’re advancing the cause of independence,” he deadpanned, and Jyn glared at him.

“Better than feeding them.”

“Jyn, you’re gonna get yourself killed,” he implored, but she waved him off. “I’m serious, they’ll cart you off to the Cadera dungeons and I’ll never see you again. This is reckless.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, already walking away from him. “They’ll all be drunk, anyway.”

.

According to Chirrut, there was a way to get into the palace discreetly by going through the Glarus Waterway — a vast system of channels that fed the desert city’s water supply — which itself could be accessed through a locked gate in Lowtown.

Jyn shimmied through the gate and into the — well, sewer wasn’t really the right word, but it wasn’t exactly a water park, either — with a cough and a bit of a shiver. Supposedly, no one alive knew the full extent of the labyrinth under the city, save possibly the dead royals; her sister Mya had once told her rumors of a great, poisonous monster in its depths, but if there was anything down here with her, it kept to itself.

The passage into the palace cellars turned out not to be very far, and relatively easy to get through; from there, it was just a matter of integrating herself into the servants going back and forth. They’d hired on a lot of temp workers, according to Bodhi, just for tonight, and probably some of them would recognize her from her occasional stints helping out Maz — she’d fit in.

Sure enough, after a few minutes of idle shuffling —

“Ah, Jyn,” someone — vaguely familiar as a worker at Maz’s shop — said, “Maz didn’t mention you’d be here.”

“Yeah, I was a last-minute add-on,” she replied, rubbing the back of her neck. “Not _really_ sure what they want me to do, though.”

“Well, we’re about to start serving the first course,” the worker said, placing a hand on Jyn’s shoulder to direct her to where a group of people were standing, each precariously balancing trays filled with small, covered bowls. “Aayla is a bit shaky with her tray, if you could help her?”

“Sure, no problem,” she said, and jogged over to where the smallest server was struggling to hold her tray up, looking absolutely terrified. “Here, let me hold onto that, and you just pass the bowls out, sound good?”

“Oh, thank you so much,” Aayla gushed, right before the doors opened and they swept into the dining hall.

Jyn had never seen the inside of the palace, and had no emotional attachment to it whatsoever, but still it twisted her insides into knots to see the banner of the Empire hanging from the rafters. She tamped down on it and put on a mild, placid face. All she had to do was hold the tray. Aayla was the one with the serving experience, who knew which bowl went where — all Jyn had to do was stand still and not drop the tray and also not vomit at the thought of the Imperials eating off of _her_ queen’s fine tableware —

From here, she could get a decent look at the new consul, the man they called Lord Vader and said was to be the next Emperor: a tall man, all in black, probably in his forties, with shoulder-length wavy brown hair and a thin scar on the edge of his right eye. He didn’t look frightening.

He looked… disappointingly normal, honestly.

He met her eyes from across the table, which caused her start, but she managed to avoid dropping the tray or spilling anything. “Sorry,” she murmured to Aayla, who waved it off.

When she looked back up, he was speaking to someone else at his table, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d somehow been found out.

.

“We will only have one opportunity,” Leia said, casting her eye over what would have to pass for troops — what scattered ribbons of resistance she and Draven had been able to cobble together from a sewer in the dark. They were mostly very young or very old, and painfully few. She didn’t like their odds, and she wouldn’t have made such a desperate attack, if there was any better chance of striking than now; she would have to hope that Draven had been able to pull through with securing reinforcements. He hadn’t failed her yet. “We need to get in, secure the consul, and barricade ourselves within the vault. I know ways in and out of there, but the Empire won’t. Once we’ve secured our hostage, General Draven will negotiate a parlay.”

She wasn’t expecting to retake the throne tonight — but by kidnapping the consul and revealing herself to the public at the same time (and from the vault, where her birthright was stashed, which would prove her lineage), she could force the Empire to re-open the terms of Alderaan’s surrender. They’d been signed by Mothma; Leia’s survival rendered them moot.

The Emperor would _have_ to treat with them, to retrieve his heir. He would _have_ to hear their terms, and if he refused… well, then he would be here, in _her_ palace, on _her_ turf, surrounded by _her_ people. She was sure that, once they discovered that she was alive and well and fighting to reclaim her throne, the people of Alderaan would rise up to support her.

After all, they’d tried once before, although Draven had held her presence back from them. Even without knowing that their princess lived, they’d been willing to fight — surely, surely, there were rebels still in Aldera.

Surely.

“All right,” she said firmly, taking a deep breath and inching toward the door that led from the waterway toward the gardens. “May the Force be with us.”

.

Jyn didn’t make her move until all of the courses were set and the servants had taken to milling about aimlessly, chatting and waiting for the guests to finish eating; she could slip away unnoticed, get into the vault, and find something of value there.

What she found was… a lot of gold, mostly, and some ornamental swords, a shield that looked like it would do better to keep off rain than arrows… an exquisite dusk-pink jewel.

“Hmm,” she said, inspecting its casing. It was beautiful, seeming to radiate from within with a rosy, warm glow. When she held it in her hand, it was strangely light, as though hollow, and had a familiar texture. “Kyber,” she said, surprised.

“Yeah, Kyber,” a voice from behind her said, and she jumped, whirling around and grabbing one of the ornamental swords, as though it might do her any more good than the dagger in her belt. Two men were standing behind her: one tall, with shaggy brown hair and a gun, and the other _very_ tall, with even shaggier dark brown hair and a crossbow. The shorter one spoke. “Fetches a pretty penny on any market, that. So, ah,” he said, gesturing for her to give him the stone. She held it close to her heart.

“I found it, it’s mine,” she countered, and the man blinked.

“Yeah, sure, and when you give it to me, it’ll be mine. So hand it over.”

“Who do you think you are?” she challenged, inching toward the nearest door.

“I’m the guy with the gun, sweetheart,” he replied, just shy of open mockery. But for all that he threatened, his gun was still pointed at the floor. “It’s mine if I say it’s mine.”

She was just judging her odds against bum-rushing the really tall one and stabbing the less-tall one, when the alarms went off. All three of them looked up, confused, but Jyn recovered first, and bolted for the door. She heard the shorter one yell _hey!_ after her, but didn’t stop.

Alarms — why the alarms? Surely, even if her absence had been noted, nobody would have immediately assumed that she was stealing. Then —

She got her answer as soon as she came out a door into the gardens: open fighting in the dining hall. There had been an attack. The Resistance had shown up, and she’d — she’d been pilfering stones!

The Resistance had shown up, and… and they were losing, badly. Even from a distance, she could see that: they were badly outnumbered, and the Imperials had not been as drunk as Jyn (nor, apparently, the rebels) had expected.

The doors behind her slammed open and her two newest enemies burst through, both expressions of anger turning to alarm when they saw the fighting. “Get back here!” the shorter one yelled, and she took off, throwing herself over the balcony and rolling when she hit the dirt ground, making for the half-open gate in a corner. She wasn’t sure where it would take her, but it probably wasn’t worse than staying still.

She was on the steps when the first bomb landed, nearly knocking her off her feet; she looked up as several Imperial airships crossed over the patch of sky she could see. It took a second for the implications to sink in.

The consul had been expecting this.

The Resistance had been doomed before they’d even started.

“There’s more!” an Imperial soldier shouted, pointing at her and the two thieves, who had also been caught off-guard by the bombs. Jyn cursed under her breath and ducked behind a pillar to avoid an arrow; the bigger thief fired back from his crossbow and felled the soldier, but the trooper hadn’t been alone.

Jyn ducked and ran, clutching the kyber crystal to her chest.

The garden steps emptied her out into a semi-familiar entryway, somewhere in the Glarus Waterway, although not a part she’d ever seen before. Oh well. There was an exit _somewhere_ in this maze, she just had to hope she found it before the Imperials, (other) thieves, or mythical poison monster found her first.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” the shorter thief cried, as he and his partner threw themselves into the passageway after her and they all ducked to avoid falling debris. “Looks like the rebels had reinforcements after all,” he muttered under his breath. “Come on! They’re heading this way!”

Jyn decided not to question why they were suddenly working together — birds of a feather, and at any rate, both Imperial and Resistance forces were going to assume that three of them were working for the other faction — and followed the two strangers as they frantically splashed through the waterway until the noise of the fighting had died down some.

“Great,” the shorter thief grumbled. “You know, they say there’s some big monster down here?” The taller thief nodded, and the first one looked to Jyn, who stared blankly for a moment before nodding, too.

“Yeah, I’ve heard,” she replied absently. “Who the hell are you two?”

The thief sighed and shook his head. “I’m Han, this is Chewie.”

“Does he speak?” she asked, and received a glare in return from Han, although Chewie just shrugged.

“He speaks when he has something to say,” Han snapped. “Who the hell are _you?_ ”

“Nobody,” she answered, and Han made a face.

“Hey, I told you _our_ names.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a personal problem to me.”

Chewie glared at her, and just sort of… _growled_ , low and deep in his throat. Jyn wasn’t sure what the exact intended message was, but it was _intimidating as hell_ all the same. She blinked.

“Jyn,” she said, eyeing the giant man. “My name is Jyn.”

“Jyn? Nice to meet ya,” Han said sourly. “Look, this place is a maze, filled with a bunch of ways to die, so why don’t we work together until we all get back into the sun, all right?”

“The stone is mine,” she said, and Han made a face like he was imagining throttling her.

“We’ll see about that,” he replied tightly. Chewie made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded urgent, and Han glanced at him. “Yeah,” he said. “We need to move before those troopers catch up to us.”

Jyn looked around the gloomy, damp halls, hoping for something familiar, but she’d never been this deep in the waterway before.

“Let’s just… pick a direction,” Han said carelessly, shrugging and propping the barrel of his gun up on his shoulder. “I’m fine with anything that’s not back that way.” Chewie made a noise, and Han cringed. “That’s just a story, you big coward,” he hissed under his breath. Jyn ignored them, and thought.

“The waterway spans most of the city,” she said slowly. “It’s fed by the river Nebra, to the east, so the channels run slightly downhill from east to west. That means that north is —” she adjusted, and pointed up a long and narrow pathway “— that direction. Lowtown is nearest the southern gate, but the entrance is south-southwest of the palace, so we need to go —” she turned, and pointed “— this way.”

Han made an appreciative sound in the back of his throat. “All right, then. Turns out you’re good for something after all.”

“Consider it repayment for the cover,” she replied, indicating to Chewie, who shrugged, as they started down the hall she’d chosen. “So we don’t die down here like most people who try to use this route.”

In a moment of perfect timing, Han stumbled over a skeleton.

.

Leia hit the waterway at full-run, urging the remnants of the Resistance forces ahead of her with a forceful “ _Scatter!_ ” — over the past two years, they’d all become intimately familiar with the waterway’s twists and turns, and would know where to meet up. Leia herself took off on the most circuitous route, cursing every step of the way.

They hadn’t been doing badly, once Draven’s reinforcements had strengthened their position, until the airships had come in.

Vader had known. He’d known they were going to attack, and he’d drawn them out and — she cursed again — further support would not be forthcoming, no matter what amount of gold they could pay or old allies they could draw upon.

They’d have to start over, somewhere — somewhere _else_ , from some new direction. She was so angry she could _taste_ it.

He had _known_.

“This way!” a soldier behind her yelled, and she drew her sword and threw herself against the wall, waiting for them to round the corner. She rammed the edge of her shield with killing force into the throat of the first trooper who made it around the corner, then stabbed his partner in the side, between seams in his armor. Just the two, but they’d be followed closely by more; the Imperial stormtroopers were pathetic individually, and tended to win only using numbers.

Her soldiers had been, from the oldest man to the youngest girl, superior warriors in every way.

There just weren’t _enough_ of them.

Leia wasted another moment of time and energy, stabbing the dead trooper once more, letting out a low, hoarse cry of rage.

.

“Right,” Han grumbled, kicking what must have been the hundredth rat carcass out of his way. “Charming city you’ve got here, I’m a big fan of the pets.” 

Chewie groaned at him — Jyn was starting to get a hang of understanding the big man, and this groan said something to the effect of _quit whining, you big baby_. She was actually coming to quite like him.

“Yeah, well, I’ve seen _hyenas_ that are smaller than these —” Han started, but cut himself off as the sound of more fighting drifted toward them from another passageway, to the left and a level above them. They all looked at each other.

“How could they have caught up to us?” Jyn asked, but before they could do anything about it, the fighters burst through the narrow hallway and into view: a young woman, younger even than Jyn, dressed all in white, with her hair wrapped around her head in a single tight braid like a coronet, wielding a sword and shield, followed closely by five troopers.

As they watched, the woman cut down one of the soldiers with brutal efficiency, kicking his body off of the pathway and into the water below them, then turned to face the others.

“Who’s next?” she snarled, but she was outnumbered, badly, and with her back to the edge of the narrow walkway, had lost maneuverability. She seemed to realize it, too, edging backward cautiously. Jyn ran forward.

“Jump down!” she shouted, and the woman turned, startled, to see her. “Quick!” 

The woman seemed to think about it for a second, looking back between Jyn and the soldiers, then took a running leap off the platform, landing hard in Jyn’s arms.

“She’s not alone!” one of the troopers shouted, and she heard Han groan loudly behind them.

“Let’s get out of here!” Jyn cried, but the woman stood her ground.

“There’s four of them, and four of us,” she said sharply, in a voice used to serious command. “Imperial stormtroopers fall easily. The two ranged fighters, keep your distance and aim for the throats of the first two who make it off the stairs. You and I can take out the remaining two. We can fight. There’s no need to run.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Han asked incredulously. “Who do you think you are, lady?”

Chewie smacked him on the arm and raised his crossbow — there was no time to argue over who was in charge.

The woman’s tactic worked perfectly, and the entire fight was over within seconds.

“Are you with the Resistance?” Jyn asked, as the woman cleaned and sheathed her sword. She turned and nodded, expression much softer.

“Yes,” she replied. “Thank you for your help. My name is Sabine. And you are?”

“Jyn,” she answered. “These other two —”

“Han Solo,” Han interjected, scowling. “This here’s Chewie. And _I’m_ in charge.”

“Really,” Sabine said coldly.

“Really,” he challenged, and took a step forward. Although he towered over Sabine, she still somehow seemed to take up more space.

“It’s a wonder you’ve made it this far,” she drawled, then shut Han out and turned to Jyn. “We need to meet up with the others, we split up at the —” she cut herself off, eyes on Jyn’s pocket, which was now, for some reason, glowing. “What is that?”

Bewildered, Jyn pulled the kyber crystal out of her pocket and stared at it: it had seemed to glow from within before, but now it was shining brilliantly.

“Huh,” Han said, and Jyn glared at him.

“It’s still mine,” she snapped.

Han opened his mouth to retort, but Sabine cut him off. “You _stole_ that?” she asked, sounding betrayed. Jyn blinked at her.

“Better than letting the Imperials have it,” she replied, and Sabine held out her hand.

“Give it to me,” she said sharply. Jyn pulled it back to her chest, affronted.

“I found it, it’s mine,” she countered.

“You stole it, it does not belong to you, give it to me,” Sabine snapped back, raising her voice, but before the argument could get any further out of hand, Chewie made a loud noise and grabbed Jyn by the shoulders, pointing in the direction that Sabine had come from; orange lamplight in the distance, many footsteps pounding on the stone. Jyn shoved the crystal in her pocket and grabbed Sabine by the arm, shoving her forward.

“Let’s go!”

They _almost_ made it out of the waterway.

They were at the stairs that would lead them out of the sewer and back into Lowtown, where they could disappear, when the gate burst open and two lines of Imperial troopers marched forward, surrounding them. Sabine started to draw her sword, but Han stopped her. 

“Not right now,” he said quietly, and held up both hands. With what appeared to be deep reluctance, Sabine re-sheathed her sword and held her hands up, too.

At the end of the line of stormtroopers stood Vader.

.

Being led through Lowtown in handcuffs was hardly the worst thing Jyn had ever had to endure, but it was definitely an experience she could have done without. She scanned the crowd for any sign of Baze or Chirrut, but they weren’t anywhere to be seen; people were muttering darkly about the lowlife thieves who broke into the palace.

“They think I’m some common thief,” Sabine said under her breath, as though the thought was disgusting; Jyn glanced at her.

“That’s better than the truth,” she replied. “Swallow your pride and let them believe it.”

Sabine looked up at her, expression souring. “My pride is all I have,” she said coldly, but before Jyn could argue the point —  _pride will get you killed, be reasonable —_  one of the guards came and took Sabine by the arm. “These people haven’t done anything,” she said loudly, in that same authoritative voice she had used before. “Let them go.”

“What are you doing?” Jyn hissed, and Sabine glared at her.

“Don’t interrupt me! I’m thinking.”

Whatever plans Sabine had been making — and whether or not those plans included Jyn, let alone Han or Chewie — it didn’t really matter: she was taken off in one direction, and the three of them led in another one.

She was in the middle of contemplating her next move when a voice cut through the din of the crowd.

“Let her go!”

Jyn flinched, turning to see Bodhi struggling to get through the crowd, where two troopers had restrained him.

“She wasn’t in the attack, she didn’t know what she was doing!” he cried, expression stricken. “You have to let her go!”

“Sorry, Bodhi,” she said, a bit lamely. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me.”

He shook his head a little. “I told you,” he choked, jaw clenched.

“Yeah, I know,” she replied, wincing. “But —” she was cut off by a trooper hitting her hard on the back of the head, with a sharp _shut up!_

“Stop, that’s my sister, you have to stop!” Bodhi urged, trying again to shove forward as Jyn rubbed her temple irritably. One of the troopers laughed.

“You’re no siblings, look at the two of you,” he scoffed, and Bodhi tilted his chin up in slightly-wavering defiance.

“We’re as good as, you’ve taken everything else from us!” he countered, managing to break free of the troopers and running forward as if to aid her, and for a moment, Jyn panicked at the thought that he’d get captured, too.

But then Chewie intervened, placing himself physically between Bodhi and Jyn.

“Don’t get yourself arrested, too, kid,” Han muttered from the big man’s other side. “Don’t worry about your sister, we’ve got this.”

Bodhi looked so forlorn and devastated that it made Jyn ache; they’d been friends for almost as long as Jyn could remember, he was the only person left from her childhood (and she was the only person left from his), he’d always had her back and he’d always stuck by her, and… they said the Cadera dungeons were inescapable.

Jyn doubted that, but, to judge from the look on his face, Bodhi didn’t.

Before she could come up with any way to reassure him, the guards dragged her, Han, and Chewie away.

.

She came to in a sandy room.

Cadera was little more than a desert oasis, right on what had once been the border between Alderaan and her sister country, Jedha. The fortress — the bottom level of which had been converted into the mass dungeon she was now in — was actually the site of the ill-fated treaty signing; somewhere above her head was the place where her sister had taken the wound that had, eventually, killed her.

(Not until after the Empire had taken all they could get from her, she recalled sourly. They’d needed her testimony: as the only Alderaanian soldier who had been present and alive to bear witness to the Captain’s treason, they’d stretched her life out with some sort of arcane magic until she’d testified, then let her die. She’d been in pain the whole time, and Jyn had only been allowed to see her once, to say goodbye. Mya had barely seemed to recognize her, and Jyn wished she hadn’t gone.)

(Jyn wished a lot of things.)

The place reeked of rust, dirt, and blood; she was unarmed but more or less uninjured, unshackled but with nowhere to go. There were guards at every heavy, barred door, and the only light came in through high windows, with no way to reach them.

Getting out of here was going to be tricky, to say the least.

“Hey, you’re awake.”

She looked around, to see Han sitting behind her, lounging like he was in a spa, one ankle propped up on the other knee and his arms behind his neck. 

“Where’s Chewie?” she asked thickly, spitting sand out of her mouth. Han tossed her a waterskin, which she took gratefully.

“Finding us a way out,” he answered. “He can get in and out of just about anywhere.”

“What happened to Sabine?”

“Who cares?” Han scoffed, completely failing to convince. At Jyn’s pointed look, he dropped the careless act and shrugged. “I dunno, they’re probably interrogating her. She _was_ with the rebels, after all.”

“Right,” Jyn muttered, standing up, eyeing the waterskin and handing it back to him. “Is this all the water we have?”

“Yeah, so be careful with it,” he replied, and she nodded vaguely. “Chewie will come and get us,” he went on, relaxing again, but Jyn didn’t like the idea of just sitting in the sand waiting, more or less, to be rescued.

The dungeon was huge and sprawling, and with little to do, it seemed that the prisoners mostly clustered together in small gangs, playing games with each other or telling stories, anything to pass the endless time.

“Anyone ever try to get out of this place?” she asked one of the prisoners, who shrugged.

“Yeah, all the time,” he replied, laying a card down and peering at it carefully. “Sometimes you even find more than just the head.”

“Lots of patrols, or difficult terrain, or what?” When he looked up at her, she clarified. “How they die. Do they get caught or are there traps and beasties, or both?”

“Dunno,” the prisoner answered. “Never gone looking, myself.”

“Yeah, I can see you’re an ambitious one,” she muttered under her breath. “What’s down this hallway?”

“The pit,” he replied. “Sweet little lass like yourself won’t wanna go down in there.”

Jyn snorted at the epithet. “I appreciate the warning. What kind of pit? Scorpions, fighting, or what?”

“Fighting.”

The sounds of a crowd cheering grew louder as Jyn walked down the hallway into another room, which had a large, barred door high on the wall, a level above and opposite her, and an arena sunken into the floor, with four gated entryways. There was a fight going on within, or at least she _thought_ it was a fight until she got closer.

What it actually was, were three big men ganging up on one person, curled up in the fetal position.

Jyn wasn’t stupid: probably the lone man had pissed someone in the gang off and was now getting what passed for just desserts in a prison. But Jyn also hated to see such lopsided odds.

“Thought this was a fighting pit, not a murder pit,” she said loudly, but went ignored. “Hey —!” she started, but it was too late: one of the men kicked down hard on the head of the lone man, crushing his skull in. Jyn recoiled at the sound. “He was defenseless…” she said quietly. 

It seemed, however, that she hadn’t gone as ignored as she’d thought: while one of the men dragged the carcass to the edge of the pit, the other two turned on her, stances and expressions making it clear that she’d made herself their next target.

Jyn’s mother had died early in the war, and her father… had been gone for a while before that. She and Mya had been out on the streets for five years before Mya had joined the war effort, and even before the occupation of Aldera, it hadn’t been very kind to poor and homeless youths.

Mya had preferred slings and arrows, but Jyn was a brawler to the bone.

She didn’t wait for them to drag her into the pit with them.

She jumped down and slid when she hit the ground, kicking up sand into their eyes and slinging more with her left hand as she came up. They were all much larger than her, but much slower, and none of them had been expecting her to put up a real fight, so it more or less evened out.

The nearest one blundered toward her, trying to get the sand out of his eyes, and she crouched, letting him get close before coming up with her right elbow in his solar plexus, then using the flat of her left hand to crush his nose. Before he could react, she ducked under his arms and kicked hard on the side of his knee, hearing the _crack_ of breaking bone; good, he wouldn’t be getting back up soon. 

She stepped back to avoid the second one, but before she could get into a better position, the third one grabbed her from behind. Instead of letting him pull her off her feet, she jumped and aimed a flailing kick into the second man’s face; it didn’t have as much power as she would've liked, but with the added momentum from her jump and the third man’s stagger backward, it was enough to bloody his nose and buy her a few precious seconds.

Jyn dug her fingernails hard into the third man’s forearm and bit as hard as she could, sinking her teeth into his wrist until she tasted blood, and he dropped her with a yell. She landed in a crouch and reached back to retrieve her dagger from its sheath on the back of her belt and sink it into his belly, before remembering —

No dagger.

Improvising wildly, she grabbed the empty sheath and used the blunted point instead, thrusting the hard, reinforced leather into the hollow of the third man’s throat. It didn’t break skin, but it was enough to send him stumbling backward, gurgling.

The second man was coming around, one hand held over his face and the other raised to bring his elbow down on her skull, but Jyn ducked low and rammed her elbow hard into his groin. It wasn’t quite enough to drop him, or else he was so angry now that he didn’t care, because he kept coming: Jyn ducked out of the way of his legs but stayed low.

But the third had recovered faster than she expected, and she only barely spotted him coming at her in periphery. Her dodge was graceless, but she managed to turn it into a roll and started to get back to her feet, when someone grabbed her around the ankles and she stumbled, cursing.

The first man might not have been able to stand, but he still had two working arms and a deep well of rage on his side. She wasted several precious seconds wrenching one leg free and stomping down as hard as she could on his head. His arms went limp, and he didn’t get back up.

By the time she was standing again, someone else had joined the pit.

“Come on, three big guys on one tiny girl?” Han called out, cracking his knuckles. “That ain’t what I call a fair fight.”

It seemed like Han had learned to fight the same way Jyn had: they both fought dirty, hitting to kill or incapacitate as fast as possible. With him keeping the third man occupied, Jyn was able to focus on the second, taking a running leap and latching onto his back, where she could hook her arm around his throat and _squeeze_.

He tried to get her off of him, but between the bloody nose and disorientation from all the hits she’d already landed on him, he didn’t get very far before he was falling to his knees, wheezing. Jyn didn’t let go until he went limp.

When she stood, panting heavily and wiping blood off her chin, Han had already taken out the third man — he’d used the wall as an impromptu weapon, it looked like — and was looking around the pit distastefully.

“You’re _really_ good at getting into trouble, you know that?” he said, and she straightened.

“I could’ve taken all three of them.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was a rattling at one of the gates, and they both turned to see Chewie standing there, giving them both a _really?_ look. Han held both hands up, then pointed at Jyn.

“Blame her. She started it.”

“ _They_ started it,” she corrected, still trying to catch her breath. “I finished it.”

Han rolled his eyes as they walked over to Chewie, who raised the gate and let them through. “You got us a way out?” he asked, and Chewie nodded, pointing vaguely behind him and handing over a heavy-looking bag. “Ooh, and you found our stuff. Nicely done,” Han muttered appreciatively, retrieving his gun and holstering it with what looked like satisfaction. Jyn’s dagger was in there, as well as the stone. Either Han hadn’t seen it, or he was over the kyber crystal entirely.

“So, how do we get out?” Jyn asked.

“Solitary,” Chewie replied, startling her — his voice was rough and low, a heavy bass hoarse from disuse. “Door bound with magic, though. No way in.”

“Wonder what they’re keeping there,” Han muttered to himself. Political prisoner, probably, thought Jyn: clearly, it wasn’t violent tendencies or killing other prisoners that got someone taken there. “Right, if we —” he cut himself off as the heavy bars over the main doorway began sliding back. They looked at each other, then shrank closer to the wall of the entry ramp — from this angle, they probably wouldn’t be seen by the newcomers.

First through the door was a double line of stormtroopers, similar to the ones that had caught them in the waterway. They split up and took positions on either side of the heavy door, and next through followed a man dressed in light armor, wearing a helmet that fully covered his head. He had some kind of heavy weapon mounted to his back, but Jyn couldn’t see well enough to determine what it might be.

“What do you mean, you can’t find _one_ prisoner in here?” he said disdainfully, and Han gave a low groan next to her.

“What?” she whispered, but he only cringed in response.

“You said yourself that the Imperial army accomplished what you could not,” another person said from behind the masked man. This one wore heavy golden armor and likewise had a helmet covering his head, but his was the same gold as the rest of his armor and ornately-designed. She furrowed her brow: a Judge Magister of the Empire.

What would a Judge Magister be doing here? They were high-ranking military leaders, generals in the Imperial army. There couldn’t be much to interest them in Jedha at all, let alone in the dungeons of the Cadera fortress. 

“You were lucky,” the first man said, and the Judge turned to him.

“A talented servant you may be,” he replied coldly in a clipped Coruscanti accent, so sharp that the _r_ s rolled, “but a servant nonetheless. You travel freely through our lands only because the Emperor has granted you leave to do so. Failure to show appropriate respect will result in said protections… disappearing.”

It was impossible to tell with the mask covering the first man’s face, but his stance seemed to show some contrition. The Judge didn’t wait for any further reply, sweeping past the man and clanking down into the dungeon, leaving by the same doorway that it looked like Chewie had come through.

The masked man made a noise of irritation and turned to the stormtroopers. “Spread out and find Solo,” he said. “I want him taken alive.”

Han groaned again, low in his throat.

“Who is that?” she hissed.

“Boba Fett,” he answered, just as quiet, leaning out slightly to see which direction the man had gone. It must have been favorable to them. “Bounty hunter. Let’s get out of here while he’s distracted that way.”

“We should be able to follow the Judge into solitary confinement,” Jyn suggested, as they carefully slipped out of the arena and through the nearest doorway. When Han gave her an uncertain look, she shrugged. “That was a Judge Magister, they don’t come out of Coruscant for nothing. Whoever’s in solitary will be a political prisoner, I bet that’s who he’s here to see.”

“How’s it an Alderaanian street thief knows so much about this stuff?” Han asked, suspicious. Jyn spared him a glance, but didn’t answer.

(The tutors she had learned from, in her early years, when she and her mother and her sister had still lived in Coruscant with her father, had been excellent. Only the best, Galen had said, for his two brilliant daughters.)

Sure enough, the Judge’s entourage led them straight down into a narrow, dark hallway — Chewie nodded, the way out was through here — and one of the attendants stepped forward, performing some complicated magic spell to open the door. They darted through after the entourage, before the door closed, and ducked into a narrow alcove that would hide them from view if no one was looking too carefully.

The Empire — or, rather, Jedha before them, if indeed this was what this room had been used for before — did not take the concept of “solitary confinement” lightly: the room was circular, rounding a pit that, from this angle, appeared to be bottomless. A heavy chain, anchored in the wall and fed through a pulley on the high ceiling, led straight down.

“Bring him up,” the Judge declared. 

One of the attendants pulled a lever and the chain made a crunching sound as the gear shifted and pulled on it, raising something from the depths.

A large cage, with a man inside.

The man had been there for a while — a few years, to guess by the unkempt, shaggy hair and ragged beard — and looked half-starved; his age was indeterminate, although he couldn’t be _that_ old, since his hair was still very dark. He was shackled, and the shackles were chained to the bars of the cage, but he was seated with one knee drawn up to his chest.

He was… familiar.

The Judge Magister removed his helmet: he was an older man, with sharp angles in his face and slightly-sunken cheeks. “So,” he said coolly. “I’m now finding out you’ve been kept alive against the Emperor’s direct orders. Tell me, why is that?”

The other man looked up. “Ask your Lord Vader,” he replied in a hoarse voice with an unfamiliar accent. His eyes were dark and his expression slack, as though long-since given in to despair.

The slow recognition crawled up Jyn’s spine like a tendril of flame.

“Lord Vader denies all knowledge of your presence here,” the Judge said, but his neutral tone made it hard to tell if he believed it or not. “And I can’t think what purpose you would serve him.”

“To silence Mothma,” the man answered, with a half-shrug. 

“Hmm.” The Judge inspected him for a moment. “We’ve captured a member of the insurgence, a woman by the name of Sabine. Who might that be?”

If the name was familiar to the man in the cage, he didn’t show it. “What would I know of insurgency?” he countered, voice low. The Judge watched him carefully, then gave another little _hmm_ and replaced his helmet.

“Such a faithful hound,” he said, matter-of-fact, “to swear fealty still to a fallen kingdom. Poetic, really. The shadow of a man clinging to the shadow of a kingdom. I _will_ get to the bottom of this, mark my words.”

Chewie pulled her tighter into the narrow alcove as the Judge Magister and his attendants passed them by. Jyn’s skull was clouded with white noise.

 _He was supposed to be dead._  

“Huh,” Han said, tapping his gun against his shoulder thoughtfully, as he walked out of the alcove. The man in the cage bolted to attention, standing in one fluid move with eyes alight, no longer the broken shell of a man who had spoken to the Judge. “Last I heard, you'd been executed.”

“Please,” Cassian Andor said fervently, “you have to get me out of here.” 

“Mm, nah, got enough trouble already,” Han replied, shaking his head and inspecting the chasm with a whistle. “That’s one hell of a drop. Hey, Chewie, what do you think is our best way outta here?”

Chewie joined Han in looking over the edge of the chasm. Andor turned to Jyn. 

“Please, it’s urgent,” he said, clutching the bars of the cage with both hands. “Sabine — for the sake of Alderaan —”

Jyn bared her teeth and threw herself forward, landing against the bars of the cage, dangling over open space; dimly, she was aware of Han making a noise of dismay. “ _Alderaan?_ ” she snarled. “What do you care about Alderaan? Everything that’s happened is because of _you_. _You_ broke our treaty, _you_ killed our queen, _you_ killed —” she broke herself off, taking in several heaving breaths.

“I did not kill the queen,” he said, shaking his head desperately and holding both hands up in supplication. “It —”

“Jyn, what the hell?” Han hissed, but the noise had drawn attention. She bit back both rage and shame; she should have known better, _did_ know better than to act like that, but — but Cassian Andor’s treachery had taken everything from her. “Chewie, we gotta go _now_.”

Chewie indicated to the cage, and the lever that had pulled it up from the depths. “We ride it down,” he said. “Quick!”

Han leaped forward and joined her on the outside of the cage while Chewie hit the lever, then joined them, landing more toward the top of it. The dungeon fell away as they descended into the abyss.

The fall took several seconds, and the landing was hard, even though they all rolled and the cage took the brunt of the impact. Jyn lifted herself off the cold stones, still seething.

“Oh, good,” Han grumbled, sitting up and rubbing his back. “Another dark underground maze. Lovely.”

Jyn took a deep breath, in an attempt to steady herself, and drew upon her childhood lessons in geography. “The Kessel passage,” she said tightly. “Used to run supplies, but now that airships have gotten big, it’s fallen into disuse.” 

“It will take us out into the Estersand,” Andor added, and Jyn’s hand, quite on its own, curled into a fist. “Near the River Nebra.”

“Great, good, fun,” Han sighed, popping his neck. “I definitely cared about that,” he added to himself in a dark mutter.

“Thank you,” Andor said, and Jyn glared at him with such force that he jumped.

“We didn’t do this for _you_ ,” she growled.

He met her eyes, both calm and calculating. “For Alderaan, then.”

“You don’t speak for Alderaan." 

“All right,” Han said loudly, reaching out a hand to help Jyn stand. “Let’s get one thing clear, before we start: if this thing takes us out at the river, it means we’ve got a _long_ way to go. We don’t have enough allies to kill one of them just because they killed a queen that one time, okay?”

“I said, I didn’t —”

“It wasn’t just the queen,” Jyn snapped.

“Okay, whatever, look,” Han said, placing himself between Jyn and Andor, both arms held out. “Crazy lady, you can kill him once we’re safely out of this grave, all right?”

After a moment of ringing silence, Chewie spoke: “If you didn’t, who did?” he asked, and all three of them looked at him.

“What do you —” Han started, but Andor spoke at the same time.

“Vader,” he said. “Vader killed her, with my knife.”

“You said that she was a traitor to the throne, _you said —_ ” Jyn began, and Han was forced to physically restrain her.

“I did not kill her,” Andor insisted. “The words —”

“ _My sister didn’t lie!_ ”

The words cut through the air like lightning, and Jyn drew in a shaky breath in the heavy silence that followed. Andor blinked.

“Mya,” he said, and Jyn tensed, if possible, even more. “She said she had a sister. Did she —”

“She’s dead,” she snapped, voice cracking. There was a moment of silence. 

“Oh,” he replied quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Jyn glared at him, but he was difficult to hate like this, disheveled and sorrowful and tired, slumped in broken shackles in the midst of rubble. Mya, in her letters, had spoken very highly of him, and had said that she thought Jyn would have liked him, too.

“You’re right,” he said slowly. “She didn’t lie. Mya was no liar. Vader has… a kind of power. Over people, energy. I spoke, but they were his words.”

“Next you’re gonna tell us he reads minds and makes rocks float,” Han said, rolling his eyes, but Chewie made a small _hmm_ , like he was considering it. “What? This is nuts, you can’t tell me you’re taking this guy seriously.”

Chewie shrugged as if to say it wouldn’t surprise him.

“You mean like the Force?” Jyn asked, curious against her will. It was ridiculous, but… the way she’d felt when Vader had met her eyes, just for that split second, and… the way he’d known, beforehand, when the Resistance was going to attack… and he’d been in Aldera on a state visit, when Lowtown had been raided…

“I don’t know,” Andor replied fervently. “I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life.”

“Great,” Han said darkly, brushing his gun off and stepping forward into the passage. “We’ve gone from glowing crystals to hokey old religions, what next?”

Chewie snorted and followed, but Jyn lingered, staring not at Andor but at the rocks by his feet. 

“Please believe me,” he said quietly, and she looked up, met his eyes. He seemed to be telling the truth. Every single instinct Jyn had ever had, every bone in her body, said that he was telling the truth, but…

Mya had died slowly, in pain, and it was because of him.

She turned on her heel and followed Han and Chewie into the dark passage.


	3. act two

Freedom didn't feel real; Cassian was running on pure instinct, half of him still in the cage, sure that he was dreaming, but he didn’t dare stop moving.

Sabine _—_  he was sure the princess had not meant the message for him, but he'd received it nonetheless: Sabine was the name of a character in a book she'd loved as a child. He had become a page when he was thirteen, and keeping an eye on the clever six-year-old princess had been one of his early duties; he had read her that book many times, feeling horribly stupid for most of them _—_  she would correct his pronunciation of certain words, and tell him (haughtily) that he was _not_ narrating the story as well as her father did _—_  but in retrospect, he thought he could see the purpose.  

Cassian, a refugee from another of the Empire’s targets, initially had no particular loyalty to Alderaan and the throne, beyond gratitude for the help, but after weeks of corralling the uncontrollable, brilliant Leia, he had developed a powerful big brother instinct regarding her. There was little that Cassian _wouldn’t_ do to help and support her.

They had told him, and everyone else, that the Princess Leia committed suicide. He had never been very sure he believed it, never _wanted_ to believe it, but she had been distraught over her father's death, and to lose her mother so soon after _—_  to the apparent betrayal of a knight she had known and trusted for most of her life… he had accepted, bitterly, that it was possible.

But now he had reason to believe that it was false, and with the news of her (apparent) survival came responsibility.

Little though she may want his help, if she'd been taken by the Empire, it was only a matter of time before they discovered her identity and imprisoned her like they had him. He had a duty _—_  she may not want his loyalty now, but she had it, and would have it until the end, even if she banished him and cursed his name.

Loyalty was all he had left.

Jyn was treating him with barely-restrained hostility, and so the other two _—_  Han Solo and Chewbacca, although he'd been given no further details, such as how they had ended up in Cadera Fortress or where they'd come from _—_  stayed between her and him as they stepped carefully away from the rubble.

Though the Kessel passage was in bad disrepair, Jyn and Han, working together, were able to get the electrical system working again to give them some much-needed light.

“Hopefully, this doesn’t go out on us between here and the river,” she muttered, wiping rust off her hands and scowling at the cold lights. “We’re pretty deep underground here.”

“Things live down here, in the dark,” he added, and tried not to focus on the way that Jyn’s whole body stiffened at the sound of his voice. “I could hear them,” he added, when Chewie gave him a quizzical look. It had been an effective, if unintentional, sort of torture: helpless in the cage, able to hear the groans and movement of _things —_  he never had been able to see them, to identify what they were _—_  beneath him, but unable to do anything about them.

He had gotten used to it after a time, when it had become clear that, while he couldn’t do anything to them, they also couldn’t do anything to him, but he felt confident that the sounds would haunt him for a long, long time.

(They had been almost human, or like something that _had_ been human, once.)

“Yeah, let’s keep the lights on,” Han muttered, tapping his gun against his shoulder in what Cassian was beginning to suspect was nervous energy. “There’s no telling _what’s_ set up shop down here.”

“Chirrut says it’s the angry dead,” Jyn offered quietly, and he glanced at her; he'd heard that name before, but couldn’t place it. “The blood seeps through the desert sand and the soul remains, corrupted. He says it’s connected to the dark side of the Force.” 

“Hey, Jyn?” Han called out, turning to speak to her while walking backward. “Could you do me a favor and _never say that again?_ Thanks.”

Chewie made a noise of fervent agreement, but Jyn shrugged.

“Either it’s real or it’s not,” she replied evenly. “If it’s not real, there’s nothing to fear, and if it _is_ real, then we need to be prepared for it.”

“How about we keep the lights on and don’t find out?” Han grumbled.

“ _I’d_ rather be prepared,” Jyn muttered under her breath. He shot her a tiny, amused smile at her tone, without thinking; she returned it with a glare, before stalking forward again to take the lead. Han shook his head as she overtook him, and glanced back to Cassian with an expression of exasperated apology.

The lights ended up holding, except for one harrowing point, when something large seemed to be moving above them _—_  some kind of heavy caravan or machinery _—_  and the walls shuddered, showering them in dust and causing the lights to flicker and, briefly, go out.

The darkness was oppressive and thick and, worst of all, _not_ silent, after the first thirty seconds or so. The shuffling started from behind them, distant but echoing on the walls, so there was no telling how far away; something _else_ followed on it, which might once have been a voice.

Jyn held something up high _—_  a stone _—_  which gave off a faint, rosy glow.

“All right,” Han whispered, edging closer to Chewie. “We can make a run for it and hope the exit isn’t far, or we can go back and try to get the lights working again.”

“Go back?” Jyn hissed, as the awful not-quite-a-voice sound came again. “You mean _that_ way? Are you mad?”

“We can _—_ ” Cassian started, but then the lights flickered back on again, to everyone’s palpable relief, although it was dimmer then before and the noises continued.

“Okay, _now_ let’s make a run for it,” Han said firmly.  

The lights flickered another couple of times before they reached the exit, finally going out entirely by the time they made it to the heavy set of stone doors.

“Great, now what?” Jyn groaned, and he felt more than saw her turning and looking behind them. But before Cassian could come up with any suggestions, Chewie made a loud noise and rammed his shoulder hard into the middle of the double doors; it took a couple of hits, and Han putting his weight into it as well, before opening and spilling the two men out onto the sand.

Han bolted to his feet, cursing and rubbing his shoulder.

“Never again,” he declared, rubbing sand off his pants and cursing again. “You hear me?” he continued, gesturing at Chewie, then at the passage. “ _Never again._  We’re supposed to be _sky_ pirates, not _—_  whatever the hell that was.”

“You’re sky pirates? Why didn’t you say?” Jyn asked, stumbling around Han and looking out into the sand. The sun was just rising, so it was still cool, but it was still a long way to the outpost between the river and the city. Cassian stumbled out of the passage and stared, but it seemed that the other three were going to more or less ignore him. 

“You never asked,” Han replied sourly.

“Where’s your ship?”

Han gestured toward the vague shape of the city, a smudge on the horizon. “Where do you think?” 

The city. Aldera.

 _Home_.

Cassian clenched his jaw tightly against a powerful, unfamiliar emotion, but only Chewie seemed to notice. The big man patted him kindly on the shoulder and gestured to the west, before setting out.

.

In spite of the exhaustion that ran all the way down into the marrow of Jyn’s bones, she (and, irritatingly, Andor) pushed for them to keep going and make it to the city before dawn, but Chewie and Han _—_  mostly Han _—_  put their feet down.

“Look,” he said, running a hand over his face and all-but falling onto a rock near the outpost, “it’s been, what, two days since the palace? Is that right?” he asked Chewie, who thought for a moment before holding up three fingers. Han cursed. “ _Three_ days. You wanna spend all night crawling through the desert, be my guest, but _I_ am sleeping.”

Jyn was a little bit ashamed to admit it, but mostly what made her decide against it was that she’d have to be doing it alongside Andor.

The worst part was, he was being so infuriatingly _polite_ , giving her space and being completely respectful, which was annoying when all Jyn wanted was a solid excuse to break his jaw. It was creeping up on her that, for a queenslayer and a traitor and an evil man, he was… rather nice. She’d already demanded to know how Han could trust him, and received only a shrug and _not like I saw him kill anybody_ , and a rare comment of _what are you afraid of?_ from Chewie.

He had a point _—_  they both did, sort of, but Chewie especially: once Han had given him a short knife, Andor had been able to defend himself well enough, but he was still in bad shape, and Jyn could easily take him out if provoked.

Maybe that was it. He knew he’d lose, so he wasn’t going to start anything or take any risks.

He just didn’t _seem_ like that bad a person.

(Maybe that was what she was afraid of: that she’d get out into the desert alone with him and find that he was actually a decent man, and then be left with nowhere to put all her anger.)

“Fine,” she sighed. “There’s an outpost close by, we can stay the night there.”

When she woke up sometime in the middle of the night and stepped out of the wide tent that passed for an inn at a desert station, she was a little frustrated to see Andor sitting at the fire, dressed in different clothes. He looked up when he heard her move, and, at her confused glance, looked down at himself and then back up at her.

“One of the men offered,” he answered, shrugging.

“That’s because they don’t know who you are,” she replied coldly, and he let out a short, insincere laugh.

“I believe you’re right,” he said. “But it’s better than my old uniform.”

She suppressed a flinch.

Traitor, queenslayer _—_  or whatever else  _—_  he may have been, no one deserved to be thrown into a cage alone for two years. She had noticed the rust-brown stains on the knees of (what she had thought was) his prison uniform, but if he meant… she glanced up at his face, thrown into relief by the firelight, hollowed-out and tense.

Yeah. He meant what she thought he meant.

They’d left him in the clothes stained with Queen Breha’s blood, for two years.

(Pointless, if he’d killed her himself, a tiny voice in the back of her head whispered.)

“I would pay my respects,” he said abruptly, startling her out of her reverie, “to your sister.”

Jyn hesitated, but there wasn’t any point in hiding it. “There’s no grave,” she replied, pulling her jacket closer around her. “She was cremated, they sent me the ashes, but… she wouldn’t have wanted me to keep them, I scattered them out on the river.”

He was quiet for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I think she would have liked that,” he said, and she tried to conjure up anger at his presumption, but nothing would come. He had, after all, known Mya quite well. “She liked being on the water.”

Jyn didn’t reply.

.

Walking back into Aldera, sandy and sticky and exhausted, was less a glorious homecoming as it was an embarrassed shuffle into midday traffic, the four of them earning a lot of judgmental stares, but at least no _suspicious_ ones.

“I never thought I would see this place again,” Cassian said quietly, and Jyn gave him a sideways glance. His tone was impossible to read: maybe forlorn, maybe hopeful, maybe just drained. She forced herself to hate him.

“You shouldn’t have,” she snapped, and she felt his disappointment; it seemed that he had thought (or hoped) their half-civil conversation meant that she didn’t loathe him anymore, and it bothered Jyn deeply that he was actually right.

“You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met,” Han muttered. “And _that’s_ saying something.”

Jyn scowled, then took a deep breath in a failed attempt to sort her head out.

“Look, I’ll… fence this somewhere,” she said, patting the pocket with the stone. “And split the payoff with you two, all right? It’s the least I can do.” 

“No,” he replied, lightning-fast. “I don’t want anything to do with that cursed rock. I just lost four days of my life to that thing, you can keep it.”

She made a face; truthfully, she didn’t want anything else to do with it, either. Kyber was… bad, and this whole ordeal had only cemented that fact. Jyn didn’t really know if it was _actually_ cursed, but it sure as hell hadn’t brought her anything but bad luck, like every other interaction she’d ever had with kyber crystals in the past.

“I appreciate your help,” Andor said, to all three of them, but Han only waved him off and Chewie shrugged.

“Well, your little torture chamber helped us get out, too,” Han said, and if the wording bothered Andor, he didn’t show it, but it definitely bothered Jyn.

 _(Torture chamber._ He wasn’t wrong.)

“Keep a low profile,” Chewie said, and it almost amused Jyn, the way Andor jumped at the sound of his voice, looking surprised. “We’re all wanted now. Be careful.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she replied, brushing past the three of them and making for Lowtown. She was in dire need of a bath, a bed, and some time to think.

She could practically feel Andor’s eyes on her as she walked away.

.

“ _—_ and then he says that it was some kind of _—_  of _—_  of _mind_ control,” Jyn spluttered, the next morning, as she paced around Chirrut’s little one-room apartment in Lowtown. “That Vader _—_   _put_ the words in his mouth. And he expects us to believe this?”

Instead of the validation Jyn was hoping for, Chirrut seemed deep in thought. “Yes…” he said slowly, tapping his staff on the ground. “That’s a very tall tale, to try and sell if it’s false.”

She flinched. “You believe it?”

Chirrut _—_  forever smiling, clouded eyes always twinkling _—_  seemed unusually grave as he thought it over. “There is a dark side to the Force, Jyn, and its power runs deep,” he explained, hands folded over the top of his staff. “I have heard of powerful men using it to control the minds and bodies of others.”

“It’s _—_ ” she started helplessly, falling into the comfortable, oversized chair that Baze could usually be found in. Of all the things she had expected to find here, him taking Andor’s side hadn’t been it; she’d been sort of hoping for Chirrut to stoke the fire of anger, to tell her that he knew Andor to be a traitor, or a liar, that her gut instinct was wrong. “It’s ridiculous, that doesn’t…”

“If there is anyone in this world who could do it,” Chirrut said quietly, “I would expect it of Lord Vader. You’re treading into dark water, Jyn,” he warned. “Be careful of your next step.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have to worry about me,” she scoffed, crossing her arms and scowling aimlessly. “I’m through with all of this.”

“Hmm,” was all he said in reply, and then, after another solemn moment, all of the gravity seemed to vanish into thin air. “Have you spoken with Bodhi today?” he asked brightly. “He’s been so upset. I tried to explain to him that the Force has a purpose for you, and that it was not to die in the Cadera dungeons.” And then, with some affront: “He didn’t seem convinced.”

“‘Course he wasn’t,” she muttered, with a little smile. “No, I haven’t seen him anywhere. I bet he’s mad at me for worrying him, especially after he went and warned me not to do it.” 

“You should look for him at the bazaar,” he said. “You know he sells some of Maz’s wares there sometimes.”

“I didn’t realize she had a stall up on that side of the city today,” she replied, standing up. “Yeah, I’ll go check it out.” 

“If you go that way,” he added, gesturing for her to come closer and then reaching behind him to grasp at something _—_  an ornate sword, with the crest of the royal family of Alderaan embossed on the sheath _—_  which he handed to her. “Take this to the temple for me. There’s a man there, Davits, he’ll be looking for it. Give him my name, and give it to him personally.”

“Davits at the temple,” she repeated, taking the sword and admiring it _—_  high quality steel, well-used and well-cared-for, not some street knife like the things Jyn was used to _—_  before nodding. “Got it.”

The temple wasn’t exactly abandoned, but it wasn’t exactly in its prime, either; an old stone facade, half-covered in graffiti and ivy, which had once been a holy place but now served as a poor man’s hospital. Jyn was familiar with the place: her mother, carried back from the battlefield, had died here.

At first, she had hated the place, but now… Lyra’s presence clung to the rock like incense, and over the past seven years, Jyn had smuggled a lot of supplies into the temple via the waterway, which connected to it, like it did most places in the city, through the cellar. She was sure that the Imperials were suspicious of how this pauper’s clinic always seemed to stretch its supplies much further than the others, but _—_  credit where credit was due _—_  they seemed to turn a blind eye, rather than block help being given to the sick.

“Oh, Jyn,” Marta, one of the nurses, said, bustling forward and attempting to usher Jyn back out of the room. “Not in there, it’s contagious.”

“I’m looking for Davits,” she said, but Marta only blinked.

“Is that a patient?” she asked, sounding harried. “A lot of them are delirious with fever, I don’t know their names. If you can give me a description…”

“Chirrut sent me?”

Marta still seemed confused, but someone else, a woman with brown skin and masses of dark curls held back from her face, stepped forward.

“Chirrut sent you to find Davits?” she asked, and Marta threw up her hands in exasperation.

“Oh, Shara, if you can help her, please,” she gushed, pressing past them and all-but running toward the room where clean linens were kept. “It’s very nasty in there, I’m afraid.”

Once Marta had gone, Shara looked Jyn over, arms crossed and feet tapping. “What does Chirrut want?” she asked.

“He sent me with something to give Davits,” she replied, crossing her arms and tilting her chin up in defiance. Shara had some height on Jyn, and looked like the sort of person who could very quickly become dangerous, but she didn’t seem to be spoiling for a fight, so much as taking stock.

“I can take it from here.”

“ _Personally_ ,” she said sharply. Shara made a small, _hmm_ , sound in the back of her throat, then shrugged.

“Well, it _is_ Chirrut,” she sighed, gesturing for Jyn to follow. “He always knows everything.”

Shara led Jyn down into the cellars, and then down even further, pulling open a grate and splashing into the waterway. From there, a dizzying set of twists and turns in the gloom finally led them to what looked like a bunker, of sorts.

Jyn’s jaw clenched all on its own: so, Chirrut had known all along how to get her in touch with the Resistance, and he’d kept it from her until today? To what end?

It wasn’t _quite_ a betrayal, since she could already hear his insistence that he was always only ever looking out for her, but it stung like a slap to the face anyway. Two years, she’d been cut off and feeling useless, and all this time, she’d been this close  _—_

There were voices arguing as Shara opened the door.

“--to admit, it’s a pretty unbelievable story,” one person was saying.

“Yeah, and since when would the Captain try and tell that wild a lie?” another countered. “He’d have to be both a traitor _and_ a fool, and say what you will about Captain Andor, but he’s no fool.”

“Crazy, then,” someone else cut in. “Gone mad in solitary. It happens, I’ve _—_ ”

“Who is this?”

The newest voice was also the most authoritative, coming from a red-haired, older man in light armor, whose sharp eyes were looking her over and seeming to find her wanting. Shara answered before Jyn could speak.

“She says Chirrut sent her with something for you,” she replied, walking over and taking a seat by the man who believed Andor’s story. The older man _—_  Davits, apparently _—_  held out a hand to her.

“Well?” he said sharply, and she hesitated; the man’s casual arrogance rubbed her the wrong way, and she was already in a bad mood. But the room had gone quiet and all eyes were on her, so she offered the sword. Davits snorted when he saw it, then snatched it unceremoniously. “Chirrut, huh? And how’d he come to get this sword?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “He didn’t say.”

“Didn’t he,” Davits said flatly. “He sends some street rat with Bail Organa’s old blade to me?”

“He said you’d be looking for it,” she replied defensively, growing affronted with his adversarial tone.

“You know Chirrut,” Shara interjected, sounding a bit wary. “You know how he is.”

“But to send a stranger?” Davits challenged. “With a blade he should never have been able to get? A street rat with a Coruscanti accent, at that?” he accused, taking a step closer. Jyn blinked, and stood her ground, eyes narrowing. “How do we know you come from Chirrut, girl?”

Jyn opened her mouth to retort, or perhaps start throwing punches, when another door opened and someone else joined the room.

“She's no Imperial, General,” Andor said, and she stiffened as he came into her peripheral vision. “She and the sky pirates helped me escape.”

He looked… different. He'd cut his hair and trimmed his beard close, and although his clothes still seemed to hang loose on his frame, he already looked much healthier. Much less the half-broken, pathetic figure from the passage, he should have been easier to hate like this, but…

Chirrut had believed the Captain’s story, even bastardized as it came from a ranting Jyn, and if Chirrut trusted someone, there was always a good reason why. It was one of the more maddening things about the man: there was _always_ a good reason.

“Your word doesn’t carry much weight these days, Andor,” Davits replied sourly.

“Then let me prove it, sir,” he said, expression neutral and smooth, so unlike the way he’d looked in the passage, forlorn eyes begging to be believed. She wondered at the switch.

Davits peered at him carefully, but whether or not he saw was he was looking for, Jyn couldn’t say. Instead, he turned sharply and snatched a length of soft fabric, which he began to wrap carefully around the sword. “Our paths stay separate,” he replied coolly.

“Sabine _—_ ” Andor started, but Davits cut him off:

“Is _my_ charge now,” he snapped. If it affected Andor, he didn’t show it. “You’re a wanted traitor, I’ve no place for you here.”

Jyn had never intended to take Andor’s side in anything, but Davits was _seriously_ getting on her nerves. “If he’s such a traitor, why didn’t he bring the Imperials down to find you?” she challenged, crossing her arms. Davits turned on her, but she only looked up at him in defiance. “Put your money where your mouth is, _General_ ,” she sneered. “If you think he’s a traitor and I’m an Imperial plant, why haven’t you killed us yet? Saw wouldn’t’ve even let him set foot in here.”

A ripple went through the gathered people at the name, which was what she’d been hoping for.

“You were one of Saw’s, then,” Davits said, paradoxically seeming less hostile now. “I _see._ How many survivors were there?”

“If none made contact with you, just me here in Aldera,” she replied. “At least, as far as I know. I think Magva has some people in Jedha, though.”

“Magva in Jedha,” he repeated thoughtfully. “How did you make it out alive?”

“Chirrut,” she answered. He watched her carefully for a moment, then turned away.

“And now he sends you to me,” he murmured. “What’s that old fool playing at?”

She ignored the sensation of Andor’s eyes on her.

“You may not have handed us over to the Empire,” Davits went on, louder but without the edge, “but you’re still too much a risk. Leave Sabine to me.” He hesitated, then sighed, tossing a set of keys to Andor. “You’ll find food there, and money to buy proper clothes. Regain your strength, you look half-dead.”

With that, Davits stalked out of the room.

“I’ll walk you back out,” Andor said quietly, reaching out as if to show her to the door. It was either patronizing or a sincere attempt to be a gentleman, and it bothered Jyn more than she wanted to admit that she honestly wasn’t sure which.

They made it back through the waterway _—_  a different path than the one Shara had brought her in on _—_  and out into another part of town, nearer to the palace.

“Do you know where I might find Han?” he asked her, and she made a face, looking around and sighing. She was far from the bazaar now, but… well, if Bodhi was working, he was probably too busy to properly greet her; she knew he’d drop everything and come over to hug and/or berate her (berate her _while_ hugging her, most likely) and he’d lose business. Taking the long way around would buy a little time.

“Probably the tavern,” she answered, gesturing in that direction. “What do you want with him?”

“Wings.”

Jyn refused to be curious about that. She was done with it, and despite what he’d said and what Chirrut believed, he was… not to be trusted or cared about. She’d take him to Han and then go find Bodhi and… be done with it all. She knew where to find the Rebellion now, what happened to Cassian Andor didn’t matter.

Chirrut had told her to be careful of her next step, and she intended to do that, for once. Being reckless had gotten her arrested and nearly killed and tangled up in things that were far, far beyond her charge; it was time to be a little more cautious.

She saw Han as soon as she stepped into the tavern _—_  and he wasn’t alone. In fact, he appeared to be on the verge of a fight, with… Baze?

Yeah, she realized, taking the stairs up to the table two at a time, it was Baze Malbus there, holding Han by the shirt. It wasn’t often that he was called upon to be the muscle, so Jyn honestly sometimes forgot how dangerous Baze could really be.

“They took him because of you,” he was saying coldly. “You’re going to bring him back.”

“Look,” Han choked, “I only met him once, I don’t even know that kid’s name.”

A creeping feeling came up Jyn’s spine, all thoughts of caution vanishing. “Baze, what’s going on? Where’s Chirrut?”

“At the Aerodrome,” Baze answered, without looking away from Han.

“Jyn, hey, a little help?” Han gasped, and Jyn put a hand on Baze’s arm. Slowly, the big man let Han go, where he collapsed into his seat, coughing.

“What’s going on?” she asked again, and Baze’s jaw clenched.

“A headhunter took Bodhi,” he said, and Jyn felt the ground fall out from beneath her as he handed her a card. It was simple, straightforward, although it seemed that the headhunter was under the impression that Bodhi and Han knew each other, from their interaction when she'd been arrested. She thought of Chirrut's insistence that the Force had plans for her. “To the magicite mines in Chandrila. Says he’ll hand him over in exchange for the sky pirate Solo.”

Chandrila. The magicite mines. Where Marquis Mothma was, although no one really knew whose side she was actually on. The stone was warm in her pocket; in all the rush of the day, she hadn't had the chance to sell it yet.

(But it was _kyber_ , not magicite, although Jyn didn't really know the difference. _He_ had known. Galen had known all about it, had samples of all sorts of magicite and a few rare fragments of kyber in his office, and he would show them to her, place them into her hand, _this is a very rare gem, Jyn, and very powerful_. She'd been too young to wonder what the difference was, or why it was important, or even what he meant by powerful.)

“You’re not exactly giving me a good reason to take you there,” Han growled, rubbing his throat. “Why should I hand myself over to Boba Fett?”

“So just take me there,” Jyn said, stepping forward, blinking back the feeling of her memories breaking open and spilling over within her. “You don’t even have to leave your airship, just take me to Chandrila, I’ll get him back.”

“ _He_ will get him back,” Baze cut in, arms folded across his chest, then glanced behind Jyn, to where Andor, half-forgotten, was. “Who are you?”

“Someone else who needs a ride to Chandrila,” he answered, expression guarded.

“Yeah?” Han said sourly. “Got a problem with the Marquis?”

“My business is my own,” Andor replied, but not unkindly. Han sat back in his seat, still rubbing his throat and glaring at Baze.

“I should charge for all this,” he grumbled, but Jyn _—_  who was getting to know Han rather better than she’d like _—_  knew better than to take the words at face value. Baze, however, did not.

“Your payment is, I don’t _—_ ” he started, but Jyn stepped in again.

“It’s all right, Baze,” she said quietly. “He’ll help us. He’s not as bad as he makes himself out to be.”

Baze relaxed, but only slightly.

“You’re responsible,” he said, glaring at Han. “If anything happens to either of them, I will track you down.”

Han held up both hands, making a face that was half alarmed and half irritated. “Easy, pal,” he replied, gesturing for Jyn and Andor to follow him out of the tavern. “I’ll bring your kids back safe.” To Jyn, once they were back onto the streets: “You got some weird friends, you know that?”

Jyn shrugged, rereading the card, but Andor asked, “Who was he?”

“Hell if I know,” Han growled.

“Baze Malbus,” Jyn answered, stuffing the card into her pocket and shooting Han a mild glare. “He’s Chirrut’s husband, the two of them sort of keep Lowtown in line. What’s our best way into Chandrila?”

“I plan on going straight there,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s still neutral, for now. No one’s checking ships.”

“Still,” Andor said warily, “it may be best for us to take a less… direct route.”

“He’s right,” Jyn said, looking thoughtfully up at the Aerodrome as they approached. “If your bounty hunter is waiting, he may be keeping an eye.”

“Between the bounty hunter and Imperial trade ships, discretion is our best option,” Andor continued, and Jyn nodded, too distracted to really attend.

“Fine,” Han said, pausing at the entrance and gesturing for them to walk inside. “We’ll take a longer way. No skin off my back.”

He was watching her intently as she walked in, and it was so unnerving that she stopped, confused. “What?”

“You know,” he said, crossing his arms, “for someone who hates that guy so much, you sure do side with him a lot.”

Jyn scowled; she had noticed, too, but didn’t appreciate it being pointed out. “Go to hell, Han Solo,” she said darkly, but he only shrugged.

“Already on the way, sweetheart,” he replied, patting her on the shoulder and breezing past.

She followed, still scowling, as he led the way into the hangar, where Andor had already joined Chewie _—_  who looked perfectly happy to see him, to Jyn’s vague irritation _—_  and Chirrut in front of a… well, it _had_ to be a ship, because it was in the Aerodrome and appeared to have an engine, but it only earned that distinction through process of elimination.

“ _That’s_ your airship?” she asked, as Andor looked from it to Han with a deeply-mistrustful expression.

“Does it stay up?” he asked.

“Yes, that is my ship,” Han replied with a sneer. “She doesn’t look like much, but she’s got it where it counts. Now let’s get going, I wanna get this over with as fast as possible.”

“Are you coming with us?” she asked Chirrut, clenching her jaw tightly, Han’s words still ringing in her head. Chirrut seemed to think about it for a moment _—_  or, more accurately, he appeared to listen to something no one else could hear. Jyn had never been able to find out if he really was tapped into some supernatural sense, or if he’d cultivated the appearance of it to support his reputation. Either would be in-keeping with what she knew of him. Finally, he shook his head.

“No,” he replied. “Not this time.”

“ _This_ time?” she repeated, and he nodded.

“As I said this morning, you tread into dark water, Jyn,” he said. “I do not think this will end in Chandrila.”

“Define _this_ ,” she said, brow furrowed, but he only gave her a fleeing half-smile; again, that gravity in his expression. “Also, you owe me an explanation,” she added, and he made a face.

“For not connecting you to the Resistance sooner?” he suggested, and Jyn drew herself up in indignation, but he went on: “The time was not right,” he explained, tapping his staff against the floor. “There are forces beyond us at work here, Jyn.”

“Yeah, well,” Han cut in, pulling a pair of gloves on and waving toward the ship, “they can leave me out of it. Let’s go.”

“So you say, sky pirate,” Chirrut said enigmatically, standing and making for the exit. “And yet you’re here.”

.

Chandrila was a wonder to behold: a floating continent with rich, blue veins of magicite cording through the rock, with soaring expanses and high mountains, it was the only place in the world where you could stand at the bottom of a mine and look down into the clouds. Its beauty and its magicite were all it really had going for it, though _—_  the mountains were lovely to look at, but terrible for crops.

The continent, and its capital city of several hundred thousand, survived only through trade: while there was some native fauna and edible flora, it wasn’t nearly enough to support the people, and had become the province of the very wealthy, who could afford to employ specialized hunters and chefs to cook the rare game. A single Imperial blockade would starve most of the continent, although their control over magicite _—_  the stone being the source of energy for all of the technology in the world, and Chandrila’s mines one of the purest veins _—_  kept an uneasy sort of peace.

They were neutral by necessity, but Saw had told Jyn, once, that there was more anti-Imperial sentiment “floating in the sky” than anyone, least of all the Empire, believed. To be sure, the rebel cells in the area were suspiciously well-funded, and Imperial forces only allowed in by special permission.

Saw had seemed certain that the Marquis, Mon Mothma herself, had a lot to do with it, but Jyn had never been convinced, and if he had proof of it, he’d kept it from her. 

Perhaps that was what Andor wanted here: although Mothma had announced his execution, if she had something to do with the Rebellion, he might have had intentions of joining her now that the General had shut him out.

“Let’s get in, get your boy, and get out,” Han said, landing his ship at the Aerodrome. “I’m already sick of this place.”

Chewie growled as if to say _oh shut up_ , and rolled his eyes. Jyn, in spite of her nerves, smiled.

“The mines are to the south,” Andor said.

“Yeah, and I hear they’re running dry,” Han added, absently adjusting his holster. “I doubt Boba Fett will be deep in them. We should run into him pretty quick once we get un _—_  underground? Is it still underground if we’re in the sky?”

“May as well be,” Jyn replied, shrugging. They seemed to have caught the attention of someone else, who walked up to them with purpose.

“You’re going into the mines?” the young man asked. “Mind if I come along? I wanted to check something out, but the place is crawling with guards.”

Jyn looked at him _—_  he was a bit younger than her, with dirty blond hair and an honest, friendly presence about him, although his clothes suggested that he had money, and a lot of it _—_ then to Chewie, who shrugged.

“Sure, I guess,” she replied uncertainly, making a face and adding in a mutter, directed toward Han. “It’d be suspicious to refuse.”

“That so?” Han challenged, crossing his arms. “Who are you?”

The blond man hesitated, and Jyn made a mental note: whatever name was about to come out of his mouth, it was going to be a lie. “Lando,” he said finally, and Han nodded slowly.

“Lando,” he repeated bluntly, and not-Lando nodded. Han sized him up for another moment, before snorting. “Yeah, okay, _Lando_ ,” he muttered. “You can go at the front.”

For a neutral city, there seemed to be an awful lot of stormtroopers about, although it didn’t seem to be them that they were looking for _—_  oddly enough, a few times, one seemed to see them, start to come closer, then shake their head and walk away. 

“That’s odd,” she murmured to herself, but only Ca _—_   _Andor_ seemed to notice.

“It’s like they un-see us,” he replied quietly, and she mulled it over. He wasn’t wrong: it was like they’d see them, then not have seen them at all. She’d almost chalk it up to stormtrooper incompetence, but she wasn’t sure she could be that lucky, especially as of late.

(Han’s words danced in the back of her mind, _you sure do side with him a lot_ , and she hurried forward to escape them.)

The mines were technically closed for inspection, but considering that they were already four wanted criminals and a guy who walked with the total confidence of someone to whom the rules only applied when he let them, they simply walked right in and no one asked questions. They weren’t very far in when they heard voices up ahead and dodged behind an empty cart.

It was the Marquis, flanked by two attendants and a Judge Magister, in different armor than the one in the dungeon. She looked exactly like she had when she’d announced Alderaan’s surrender _—_  stately white robes with a gold chain across the shoulders, short red hair with delicate golden ornaments.

“I’ve been told that the quality of the magicite mined here has been diminishing of late,” the Judge said conversationally. “You do your job well, Marquis.”

“As I said,” Mothma replied evenly, expression serene, “Chandrila is practical. If diverting the purest magicite to Lord Vader is what’s required to prevent war, then so be it.”

“I wonder if all of your subjects adhere to your school of thought,” the Judge mused. “Rumor has it, there’s quite a rebel presence in the area.”

“Rumor has many things, your honor,” she said. “If anyone had any evidence of anti-Imperial sentiment within the city, I should hope they would bring it to me and we would handle it appropriately.”

It was either clever double-speak or plain flattery. Jyn wasn’t sure which to believe.

The group continued out of the mines, and, once they were out of sight, Han stepped out from behind the cart, tapping his gun against his shoulder thoughtfully.

“I wonder what Vader wants with the purest magicite?” he said, almost to himself, and not-Lando followed him, also peering in the direction where the Marquis had gone.

“So do I,” he muttered, then changed tack, turning away and looking deeper into the mines. “If we keep following this track down, we should end up at the ore zone.”

“I don’t plan on going that deep,” Jyn said, pushing forward. “I’m just here to find my friend, Bodhi. He was kidnapped and brought here.”

Not-Lando shrugged. “We’ll probably find him on the way. Who kidnapped him?”

“Long story,” Han replied, shouldering past not-Lando to follow Jyn. 

The mines were eerie like this, empty and echoing, and _—_  it was bizarre, although she’d already known about it, sort of, but there were occasional gaps in the rock, beyond which she could see sky. It made the whole place drafty and strangely-lit, half with hanging lanterns and half natural sunlight, coming in near her feet.

It made sense, all of a sudden, why Boba Fett had brought Bodhi here: the place was sprawling and disorienting, and very easy for someone to set up an ambush in.

But they never seemed to run into him, eventually making it to the ore zone before seeing any sign of another person. The ground here was rougher, and now that they had reached the active part of the mine, the walls and floor were thread through with tendrils of livid blue crystal, in parts cut away or dug into.

Not-Lando knelt down to inspect an exposed vein near the wall before pulling out a small crystal. “So they _are_ getting the magicite here,” he murmured to himself. “The purest…”

“What’s that?” Han asked, and not-Lando looked up.

“It’s synthetic kyber,” he replied. “My teachers taught me that magic is in the stone, but the Force is in the bone,” he explained, comparing the color of the crystal in his hand to the raw vein of rock. “But for some reason, kyber crystals are connected to the Force. They’ve been working on it at Eadu Laboratory,” he went on, and all of the breath left Jyn’s body, “trying to manufacture kyber out of magicite. I’m not sure if they’ve really succeeded. This doesn’t look much different from the stones here.”

The words echoed in her head and sent her mind spinning.

Eadu. Kyber and magicite.

This was no coincidence.

“So, wait, what’s the difference?” Han asked, and not-Lando glanced up at him in exasperation, so he clarified. “ _Practically_. What’s that rock supposed to do that normal magicite can’t?”

“Kill people,” Jyn answered, simultaneously in the mine and back in her father’s office, a child playing at his feet. “When someone connected to the Force uses it properly, they can just… end someone’s life. On a large enough scale… you get Jedha City.”

The legendary destruction of the capital city of Jedha, during the Empire’s initial expansion, even before Palpatine took the throne: the city went to sleep, a handful of soldiers walked in and then back out, and… some said that there was some kind of explosion, while others said that the city simply never woke up and all of the million-and-a-half people who had lived there lay dead in their beds, but the judges covered it up by bombing it the next day. Either way, the fact remained, that one and a half million people had died in a single night, and now Jedha City was a ruin sinking into a swamp, populated by ghosts, and no one knew exactly why.

(Galen knew, she was sure of it: only a few days after it happened, he had sent her and Lyra and Mya away, to go back to Lyra’s hometown of Aldera. He had been upset, she remembered, and he hadn’t explained anything to her or to Mya. That was fifteen years ago, and she hadn’t seen or spoken to him since.)

“Why are they trying to manufacture kyber?” Jyn asked harshly, coming back to the present. “How do you know about what goes on at Eadu?” she went on, storming forward and glaring at not-Lando as he stood up, startled at the venom in her tone. “Who taught you about the Force, and why? _Who are you?_ ” 

“Jyn _—_ ” Han hissed.

“Ah, Solo,” a new-ish voice said, and Han rolled his eyes so hard that he must have given himself a headache. “Good of you to come.” 

“ _Really?"_  he asked to no one. “Are we really doing this now?”

“What, did you forget?” Andor asked incredulously, drawing his sword.

“No!” Han countered, in such a defensive tone that Jyn felt confident that he'd at least gotten distracted from it. She grit her teeth, and compartmentalized.

“Where’s Bodhi?” she demanded, stepping away from not-Lando and toward the bounty hunter. Boba Fett waved a hand; in the other he held a wicked-looking gun, huge and connected to whatever pack was on his back, clearly a thing capable of taking someone’s head off.

“Free, somewhere,” he answered, gesturing to the expanse of the mines. Jyn wanted to scream at him, and drew her dagger, holding it in a reverse grip and stepping forward.

“Forget this,” not-Lando muttered from behind them, and did… _something_ , right before a minecart crashed onto its side, spilling rocks all over the floor and knocking the bounty hunter off his feet. “Let’s go!” 

They all took off at a run, staggering through the uneven stone and all-but spilling back out onto the track, and at some point in the chaos, Jyn ended up at the back, just far enough behind to be spotted by Boba Fett. He fired at her, but missed, hitting the wall and spraying Jyn with dust and pellets of stone. She didn’t wait to see if anyone else had noticed.

She stood up and pulled her dagger back out, walking around so that the wall would be at her back. He reloaded; she judged the distance.

“You’re only getting in the way,” Boba Fett said. “Just let me pass, Solo is the only one I want.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve pissed me off,” she replied, taking another step. 

He took aim. 

“Jyn!” someone called, but she ignored it, watching the bounty hunter carefully. She dodged hard to the left as he fired, then tossed her dagger and caught it blade-first before letting it fly.

Jyn’s aim was better, and there was a nice gap between the bounty hunter’s helmet and his armor.

She straightened up, brushing dust off her shoulders and glancing behind her to where Cassian was, holding his sword and looking surprised. “So much fire-power,” she muttered, kicking the barrel away, “so little aim. What are you doing here?”

“You fell behind,” he replied, re-sheathing his sword. “But it looks like you didn’t need my help after all.”

An old emotion crawled up the back of her neck. She remembered: her first street fight, in over her head and laid-out, flat on her back, when a heavy stone had flown out of nowhere and cracked the mugger’s skull. Mya had given her hell for getting into a fight without backup.

Mya had always come back for her, watched her back, made sure she was safe.

“What’s your connection to Eadu?” Cassian asked, startling her back into the present. When Jyn didn’t respond, he looked up, then held up both hands in supplication. “Forget I asked,” he said quietly.

She tried to ignore… everything, really, as she rifled through the dead bounty hunter’s bag and pocketed his gold and heavy pouch of shot _—_  Han would get good use out of that, and… they were manufacturing kyber, _he_ was manufacturing kyber, even knowing, even after it had done  _—_

Her father was building a weapon that could wipe out a city in a night, and a traitor had come back to make sure she got out of the mines safely. More than a traitor, a nobody, someone who had no reason to care whether she lived or died, and considering how cold she’d been to him, probably more reason to leave her behind than anything else.

Mya had trusted him. She’d said in her letters that she thought Jyn would like him, that they thought alike, he reminded her of Jyn in a lot of little ways.

_You sure do side with him a lot._

The weight sank into her shoulders and _down_ , through her body and out of her legs and into the rock beneath her feet. She imagined it continuing down, out the other side and into the blue sky.

“You really didn’t do it, did you?” she said in a low voice, refusing to turn and look at him. “You didn’t kill the queen.”

She heard him let out a long, heavy sigh. “I _failed_ her,” he answered finally, with weight. “The queen and your sister, both. And because of my failure, they’re dead.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He was quiet for a moment, and she could all-but feel his eyes on her, before he said, “I swear to you, I did not kill Queen Breha.”

She’d _known_ it, in the same way that she’d always _known_ that her father was working for the people who had killed her mother and sister, but knowing and accepting were two very different things.

“And Vader is a Force user, and he’s siphoning off the best magicite to make his own kyber,” she murmured. “I wonder who his first target will be.”

“That depends on who draws his ire,” Cassian answered, and Jyn looked up at him. “Could be Chandrila, if Mothma angers him. Or Aldera, if we do.”

“With that kind of power…” she started, but didn’t have to finish. Cassian motioned in the direction of the city.

“We should go before anyone comes looking.”

She nodded, sheathing her dagger and taking off at a bit of a run, although whether she was trying to outdistance the body or the Captain or the pull of fate or the ghost of her father’s crimes, she wasn’t sure.

They met Han halfway to the mouth of the mines, to Jyn’s mild surprise.

“Were you coming back for us?” she asked, and he shuffled, feigning nonchalance.

“What? No, I was…” he seemed at a loss for a decent excuse, and so rolled his eyes. “Sorry for caring, won’t happen again.”

“No, no, it’s sweet,” she said, patting him on the arm with somewhat-forced cheer. “We're getting to be friends, aren't we?”

“Yeah, well…” he started, but stopped again as they made it to the mouth, only to be hastily pulled behind a rock by Chewie. At the edge of the mines, standing now surrounded by stormtroopers as well as two ornately-dressed attendants, one in gold and the other in blue, was not-Lando, and Bodhi. Jyn had to resist the urge to run out to him. 

“Master Luke,” the gold-robed attendant said, tone and expression harried, “you have given all of us a terrible fright. Going alone into the mines like that! What would your late mother think?”

“There’s nothing in there that can hurt me, Cee,” apparently-Luke replied. “And I wasn’t alone,” he went on, and Han tensed, possibly preparing to run, but Luke had other plans for the rest of the sentence: “Bodhi here was with me.”

Bodhi looked deeply uncomfortable. “Right,” he said, somewhat lamely.

“We found him wandering the mines,” Cee said, and it was impossible to tell from his tone whether or not he actually believed Luke. There was a moment of silence.

“I got lost,” Bodhi offered, eyes wide. Clearly, he was not fond of the path his immediate future appeared to be going down. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Luke said, walking past the guards and slinging an arm around Bodhi’s shoulder. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

And with that, they walked away; Jyn bit back a scream of frustration. All she wanted was her surrogate brother back. None of this political drama, none of this kyber, none of this magicite, none of this  _—_ none of this _past_. She had wanted, and still wanted, to be involved in the Resistance, but she _didn't_ want to pry open all of her old, badly-healed scars in the process.

She had been content to be an orphan and fight against the Empire. Galen was dead, Galen was a coward, Galen was a monster, Galen _didn't matter anymore_ , or at least not to Jyn.

“Well, I knew his name wasn’t Lando,” Han muttered, stepping away from the rock. “Who d’you think he was?” he asked Jyn, who was already scowling. “Someone high up, it looks like. Judge’s son, maybe?”

“Luykas Owen Skywalker,” Cassian said slowly, and all three of them turned to him. “Son of Anakin Skywalker… now better known as Lord Vader.”

“What?” Jyn asked, aghast, looking back to where Luke had disappeared with Bodhi. “ _That_ kid? But he seemed so…”

“ _Not_ evil,” Han finished for her, and she nodded. Cassian looked thoughtful.

“That _does_ explain a few things,” he mused. “Like how he knows about kyber and Eadu. And the troopers…”

“How do you know?” Chewie asked, and Cassian glanced at him, then gestured at his neck.

“The symbol on his pendant,” he explained. “Vader wears it, too. I wasn’t sure until I heard the name.”

“All right, all right,” Han muttered, stretching and letting out a heavy sigh. “Let’s get a drink and figure out our next move.”

.

The Cloudbourne Tavern wasn’t very busy, but it also wasn’t very large, so even a small crowd was enough to make the place feel full and make Cassian feel hunted; he’d been alone for so long that the noise and the crowd set him on-edge, although he tried not to show it. He, Jyn, and Chewie took a seat while Han went to the bar.

“So, now what?” Cassian asked in a low voice, and Jyn sighed.

“If Luke is as high-ranking as you say,” she murmured, fidgeting aimlessly, “he’ll probably be staying at the Marquis’s estate. He’ll have Bodhi there, and you wanted to see Mothma yourself, didn’t you? So that’s where we need to be.”

He mulled it over _—_ as well as the meaning of her reaction to the name of the laboratory, he wondered just who she really was _—_  as Han returned to the table with drinks for himself and Chewie.

“Is now really the time to be getting drunk?” Jyn asked them, eyeing the glasses of hard liquor, and Han shrugged.

“I have a policy,” he explained, swirling the contents of his glass, “for every near-death experience I survive, I get a damn drink. A _real_ one.”

Jyn rolled her eyes, and Chewie made a noise as if to say _I don’t know_. Cassian ran a hand through his hair. “We need to get into see the Marquis,” he said, tapping the table thoughtfully. “We’ve got to get her attention somehow.” 

“Attention, huh?” Jyn mused, and then, abruptly: “Give me that shot,” as she snatched Han’s little glass of whiskey, draining it in one go with a cringe. “That’s disgusting, you should have better taste than that.”

“It’s _cheap_ , is what it is, sweetheart,” he snapped, crossing his arms. “And you owe me one now, Miss Not-the-time. What are you playing at?”

She leaned forward so that she was very close to Cassian, and he could smell the strong liquor. “How’s that? I smell like a drunk?”

He blinked. “You do,” he replied, both confused and a little alarmed, and she smirked.

“Watch this,” she said, then stood up and staggered up to the bar.

Jyn, it turned out, was _good_ : when she got to the bar, she stumbled into a chair with a wide grin, then snapped her fingers until she got the bartender’s attention. “Can I _—_ ” she furrowed her brow, inspecting the bottles on the bar-back. “Ooh, can I get a glass of the Madhu? A tall, thanks, darling.” 

“Of course,” the bartender said, and Jyn leaned forward heavily, both elbows on the bar, and, loud enough to be heard by most of the room:

“So, what’s with these rumors about Captain Andor I’m hearing?” she asked, and several people looked up.

The bartender shook her head. “I’m afraid I haven’t heard any rumors about Captain Andor,” she replied warily, setting a small glass of clear liquid in front of Jyn, who waved a hand.

“No, I heard someone in Miner’s End, some fancy blond Imperial kid, he says the Captain wasn’t executed, but they’ve _lost_ him,” she explained, looking delighted. “Can you imagine that? The Empire keeps him locked up for two years and then he _—_  what, slips through their fingers?”

“The Marquis herself announced his execution,” the bartender corrected, and Jyn shrugged.

“Yeah, and the Marquis is also feeding the best magicite to the Empire,” she said. “Y’can’t trust her.” She was starting to draw an impressive amount of attention. “‘Course, I’m also hearing that her pocketbook’s on the side of the rebels, so who knows?”

“You’re awfully well-informed for a Coruscanti outsider,” someone else at the bar said sharply, and Jyn made a  face, patting the man on the back.

“You’d be amazed what you can pick up if you listen,” she replied, then leaned forward again. “And I’m Alderaanian, not Coruscanti.”

“Then why should you care if the man who killed your queen lives?” he countered.

“‘Cause he’s supposed to be dead,” she snapped, but then looked thoughtful. “And if he’s not, I wonder why.”

“Why would the Marquis lie?” the bartender asked, but it sounded more a challenge than a question, and Jyn shrugged.

“Why would she help both the Empire and the Rebellion?”

“Chandrila’s policy of neutrality is sacred,” another patron, on the other side of Jyn’s dramatic slouch in her chair, said haughtily. “If she has given aid to the Empire to ensure our peace, one can hardly fault her for it, and you’ve no evidence that she has anything whatsoever to do with the Rebellion.”

But that patron didn’t matter: what mattered was the bartender and the first man, who were looking at each other intently, before the bartender nodded and gestured, very subtly, toward the back of the room.

“Sacred neutrality?” Jyn countered, now sounding less drunk and more irritated. “The only neutral nation is a dead one. Either you’re against the Empire or you’re helping them. There’s no in-between.”

He hid a smile; he’d known from the start _—_  before, really, from Mya’s stories _—_  that Jyn was made of fire, but seeing her in action was striking, all the same.

“I beg to differ _—_ ” the neutral patron said, but the bartender cut him off. 

“I think you should leave,” she said sharply, pulling the still-full glass away, but she was looking at the first man, who took Jyn by the arm and began marching her to the door. Han cursed under his breath, and they waited until the door had closed behind them and the fuss had died back down before they stood and followed _—_  Cassian noticed, too, the bartender slipping out a back door at the same time they left around the front.

“Round the back, you think?” Han suggested, hand hovering over his gun. “That bartender went that way, there's gotta be a back way in.”

“Loading dock,” Cassian offered, pointing into the alley. “It will be where they get supplies.”

Sure enough, when they went around to the back, they found a large door with an open padlock, and through it, the sound of Jyn’s voice:

“Real subtle, guys, a hideout in the back of a tavern? It’s a wonder people don’t just waltz in from the dock.”

Han smirked, and held out a hand to stop them, mouthing _wait for it._

“We have plenty of protections,” another voice said. “People don’t come here if we don’t want them to.”

 _Now_ , Han mouthed, grinning, as they walked forward into the room. “You mean, like this?” he drawled, and Chewie snorted. Only the bartender and Jyn didn’t look surprised.

“You forgot to lock the door?” the bartender asked incredulously, rolling her eyes. She sat with her arms crossed at the head of a large table, around which was a smattering of people, mostly unfamiliar, but one… Cassian was sure that he’d seen the one standing in a corner (now with his hand on his sword) in the mines, with Mothma.

“I’m sorry, Hera,” the man from the bar said, looking sheepish. “She’s… _touchy_.” This was punctuated by the way he rubbed his wrist with a wince: Jyn, it appeared, had taken issue with being dragged out of the bar by a stranger. Cassian struggled not to smile again.

“Who are you?” Hera demanded, and Han held out both arms in a sort of mocking shrug.

“We’re with her,” he answered, then made a show of remembering something and stepping aside. “Oh, and him.”

It had the intended effect: when Cassian stepped forward, the entire room took notice, and Hera even stood up, expression changing from borderline-hostile to shocked in a flash.

“So you _are_ alive,” she said quietly, furrowing her brow. “Then why did Mothma lie?”

“I’m not sure,” he replied. “But I believe Vader had something to do with it.”

The man who had been in the mines drew his sword and held it to Cassian’s throat; he’d moved so quickly that even Cassian barely had time to react, and only stopped when Hera held out a hand.

“You’re a traitor,” the man said coldly. “You killed Queen Breha.”

“I did not,” he said, and wished he had more to offer, but Hera looked thoughtful.

“Zeb, wait,” she said, walking around and inspecting Cassian with sharp, calculating eyes. “Mothma wouldn’t have lied about this without good reason.” She turned to Jyn, of all people. “Do you believe him?” she asked. “You’re from Alderaan, you said you worked with Saw Gerrara. Are you on his side?”

In spite of their conversation in the mines, Cassian still held his breath. She looked at him, her expression odd, before she replied, “I am,” and some of the tension in his body relaxed. “Vader kept him alive against the Emperor’s orders, there must be a reason.”

“What of the soldier who testified?” Zeb challenged, and Cassian opened his mouth to reply, but Jyn beat him to it. 

“She was mistaken,” she said, voice strained. “We have reason to believe that Lord Vader is connected to the Force. He can make people believe things that aren’t true.”

“The Force?” Zeb repeated, sounding a bit incredulous, but he removed his sword from Cassian’s neck all the same. 

Hera frowned, still looking deep in thought. “So, you need an audience with Mothma, I take it? I wonder if she knows she was lying,” she added in a mutter. “Zeb, take them to her estate. Keep an eye, just in case.”

Zeb nodded and sheathed his sword, but kept his hand on the hilt. “Follow me,” he said.

He led them through the streets until they arrived at the estate, walking them directly in and up several flights to some sort of waiting room. “Wait here,” he ordered, and disappeared through another door.

Han sank into an overstuffed chaise lounge, Chewie walked over to peer out the window, and Jyn sat carefully and somewhat-disdainfully down in a velvet armchair next to a tiny round table. Cassian chose to stand, resting his hand on the hilt of his sword.

Mothma didn’t keep them waiting long, sweeping regally into the room.

“Captain Andor,” she said softly, folding her hands serenely in front of her. “I was told you had been executed.”

“You were lied to,” he replied and she raised an eyebrow.

“I see that,” she murmured. “So you are the sword Vader has strung over my head,” she went on quietly. “He leaves nothing to chance, does he? If word of your survival were to spread, I would find myself in a very… compromising position. What brings you to me?” 

“The Empire has captured a member of the Resistance,” he answered carefully. Although he had very good reason to believe that Mothma was on their side, it paid to hedge his bets. “She has support but I don't think it will be enough. I’m asking your help in rescuing her.”

Draven had all-but admitted to not having a plan to rescue the princess when he’d shut Cassian out, and while Cassian was not by nature a disobedient soldier and Draven was still, technically, his commanding officer, his loyalty to Leia took precedence. And at any rate, he considered himself much more disposable than General Draven.

“Member of the Resistance, or leader?” Mothma asked, but he didn’t reply. She may have simply repeated what she’d been told about him, but she had knowingly lied about Leia’s suicide, even if her hand had been forced; he doubted that she knew what had become of the princess, but she knew it wasn’t what she’d reported. “Vader has put me in a very delicate situation, you see, and only tonight, he’s sent one of his Judge Magisters to pick up his son and return him to Coruscant. Judge Piett was… already coming this way, from Aldera,” she added, and Cassian nodded slowly.

“I see,” he replied.

“My hands are tied,” she said carefully, keeping intense eye contact. “You understand I have my country to consider.” And then, so quiet that he almost couldn’t hear it: “If you help me, I can help you.”

She glanced at his sword, then back up to his eyes. It clicked into place.

Leia was with the Imperial fleet that had come to pick up Luke, in the custody of a Judge Magister. Cassian needed to get onto the ship to get her, but there was no way to do that both safely and discreetly. Mothma was funding the Resistance under the table, and the Empire was becoming suspicious. She needed to give the Empire an offering of goodwill, to prove that she was loyal to them, and get them to stop digging. 

He drew his sword.

“What are you doing?” Jyn cried, as Mothma took a step backward and called for the guards.

“Tell Judge Piett that we have apprehended the Captain, and those who abetted his escape,” she declared. “They are to be taken directly to him.”

When he turned, Han and Chewie looked horrified, but Jyn looked betrayed. He met her eyes, and mouthed, _trust me_.

Her expression became guarded and calculating, but if she was actually willing to put any faith in him, he couldn’t see it.

.

They were, in rapid succession, handcuffed, dragged into a little shuttle which flew them to meet with the fleet, and dragged back out, into the expansive halls of an Imperial light cruiser.

Jyn felt numb the whole way, unsure what to think and struggling to get her feet under her. It seemed like such a long time ago that Bodhi had called her reckless.

Cassian had asked her to trust him, although she wasn’t sure why he expected her to, since she’d barely decided to accept that he wasn’t a traitor, but… he’d gotten himself arrested, too, which was stupid if he didn’t have a good plan for what to do.

She’d gathered from the conversation that Sabine was on the ship coming to get Luke. She could even see that Cassian’s intention had been to get them taken to the Judge Magister to reunite with her. That all made sense.

What didn’t add up was that the General had told him, on no uncertain terms, to leave Sabine to him, and while Jyn could certainly get behind the screw-that-guy sentiment, she wasn’t really sure how Cassian planned to get them out of Imperial custody, while chained, from the inside of an Imperial cruiser.

They were dragged, with much sullen grumbling from Han, up to a large set of double doors _—_ the bridge, presumably, where the Judge would be _—_ behind which, standing in front of the Judge Magister, shackled but with her chin held high in defiance, was Sabine. She turned when the door opened and they were marched in, and her steely expression morphed into one of pure hatred.

“ _You_ ,” she snarled.

Cassian managed to get out, “Your Maj _—_ ” before she slapped him full in the face, with force enough to make him stumble.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” she hissed, eyes alight with rage.

“Come now,” the Judge Magister said loudly, walking over and placing a hand on Sabine’s shoulder; she went rigid, eyes landing on his hand in a way that suggested she was fantasizing about tearing it off. “This conduct is hardly befitting the late Princess Leia Amidala Organa.”

Jyn froze, shooting Han a glance _—_  he looked just as surprised as she was. Sabine was the princess? And _—_  Cassian had known, that was why _—_  that was why he had kept saying that she was important to Alderaan, that was why he’d brought her up to the General _—_  that was why he’d been willing to go so far as to get them arrested, to reach her.

In retrospect, she wondered why it hadn't occurred to her.

“Princess?” Han repeated incredulously, and the Judge sighed theatrically.

“Of course, she bears no proof of her blood,” he said. “As far as we’re concerned, she’s no better than any mean member of the Insurgence.”

“The _Resistance_ ,” Leia corrected through gritted teeth.

Judge Piett ignored her. “Provoking instability and unrest, claiming royal blood without proof… these are crimes punishable by death. Of course, if you had such proof,” he went on, as though just now thinking about it, “the Consul has said that he is more than willing to accept the aid of the _true_ princess in restoring peace.”

“I will not be Vader’s puppet,” she growled, and Han made a noise in the back of his throat.

“So, you’d… rather die?” he asked bluntly, but she didn’t answer directly, only glaring at him.

“Don’t interrupt me,” she said, but the only effect it had on Han was to make him raise an eyebrow. “The girl, there,” she went on, gesturing at Jyn, “she stole a stone from the royal treasure. Take us back to Aldera and allow her to retrieve it, it will prove my lineage.”

Either Jyn was suddenly more aware of it, or the stone itself was somehow aware of Leia, because it seemed to burn hot in her pocket. The look on Leia’s face, however, made Jyn certain that she did not want to reveal that she still had it on her person; she was clearly trying to buy time and the opportunity to get away from the Empire in her home city.

“It was just a _—_ ” she started, but Leia shot her an intense glare, all-but screaming _don’t say it,_ so she changed tack “ _—_ gemstone. I sold it,” she lied. “It could be anywhere by now.”

The stone was now really, _really_ hot in her pocket. Jyn wished that Leia would back up.

Han seemed to notice it, stepped forward to conceal Jyn’s side from view, and began improvising madly. “Surely you’ve got some other way to prove it, right? Something only the royal family would know, maybe?”

“That stone has been passed down in the royal family for generations,” Leia replied. “If it’s been lost, we can track it down. We only need time.”

“Nah, come on,” Han said, with a little, desperate laugh. “There’s gotta be something else. A blood test? Maybe the Marquis will recognize her? Maybe _—_ ”

“What’s in her pocket?” Piett demanded, pushing aside Han, who let out a long sigh.

“I tried,” he muttered.

“You did,” Jyn replied, as Piett pulled the stone out of her pocket and Leia’s jaw dropped open.

“You had it with you the whole time?” she said, aghast.

“Ha!” Piett said, hefting the stone, now glowing brilliant white-pink, in his gloved hand. “That saves us a lot of trouble, I thank you, thief.”

“So you have your proof,” Cassian said, stepping in. “If we _—_ ”

“ _You_ shut up,” Leia snapped, and Cassian’s jaw clenched.

“Look, you know she’s the real thing,” Jyn offered, glancing sideways at him. The whole left side of his face was red where she’d struck him. “Take us to Vader, and we can work something out.”

“And why should I listen to a petty thief?” Piett countered, with mock confusion. “The Princess has already made her position clear. Take them to the brig,” he added, gesturing at his guards. “Quarter the Princess separately.”

And for the second time in a week, Jyn was dragged off to a prison cell. It didn't help to think that she was there for a reason.


	4. act three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry for the delay, guys, it's just been... one thing after another. anyway, i hope you enjoy this act!

Leia was taken away first, and by the time three heavy-armored guards had marched the four of them off of the bridge, there was no sign of where she had been taken, which, Jyn figured, was probably the point.

“I can’t believe that was the princess,” Han muttered under his breath.

“I should have thought,” Jyn said to herself, shaking her head. “They lied about Cassian, too.”

“Okay, but, when I think “princess”, I think…” Han said, gesturing vaguely with his bound hands, “you know, _delicate_.”

Cassian, behind her, let out a small laugh. “I’ve known her Majesty since she was six,” he said, and Jyn glanced at him, to see a small, wry smile on his face. “ _Delicate_ has never been a good way to describe her.”

“Yeah, by the way,” Han replied, half-turning and pointing accusingly at Cassian, who raised an eyebrow, “you didn’t think to warn us? At _any_ point?”

“Would you have believed me?” he countered, and Han shrugged.

“I dunno, but if you’d given us a heads-up, I might not be bitching about it now.”

“Oh, I _do not_ believe you,” Jyn scoffed, and Han gaped at her in exaggerated offense as Cassian hid another small smile and Chewie snorted.

“Quiet!” one of the guards behind them said, shoving Han hard and causing him to stumble; Han was quick, though, and grabbed the guard’s spear, jerking it roughly out of his hand and cracking him hard on the helmet with it before he could recover. Jyn body-checked a second guard who was coming to the first one’s aid, roughly shoving him back against Chewie, who used the heavy shackles on his wrists as an improvised weapon, bringing them down hard on top of the guard’s head.

Cassian had gotten a hold of the spear Han had taken and rammed the third guard hard in the stomach with the dull end, and was just coming back around with the edge for a killing blow, when the guard held up a hand and coughed  _—_

“Stop!”

Everyone went still.

“General?” Cassian asked, as the third guard took off his helmet. Sure enough, beneath the heavy metal was the scowling, now-pained face of General Draven himself.

“I recall telling you not to get involved,” he said sourly.

“You did, sir,” Cassian replied, but Jyn scoffed.

“No, you told him to leave “Sabine” to you, and that he should regain his strength,” she countered, irritated by the man on principle. “You never ordered him _not_ to do anything.”

“Picking at semantics?” Draven replied, shooting Jyn a disapproving look while he unlocked Cassian’s shackles. She raised an eyebrow.

“So what was _your_ plan?”

The lack of a response told her enough: he’d managed to make it onto the ship, but he’d had no plan for getting himself and Leia off of it.

“Nah,” Han mused, looking carefully at anything except Jyn’s face, while Draven unlocked his shackles and Cassian started on hers, “I’m sure it wouldn’t have been suspicious, one guard walking in and taking the princess with him, and then to the airship berth. Oh, and,” he added, with barely-concealed mockery, “you can pilot anything in there, right?”

Draven gave him an unamused glare, which Han responded to with a grin.

Because he was right in front of her, Jyn could see that Cassian was amused, although the moment he turned back to Draven, all signs of humor had vanished.

(She was starting to get the hang of him, a little bit: Cassian Andor was the perfect soldier, although she wasn’t sure he wanted to be.)

“They’re keeping her Majesty in cell block 1138,” Draven snapped, then appeared to be mentally counting to ten, before: “It will be much easier to free her with your aid. I… appreciate it.” The last, he said through gritted teeth.

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Han asked, patting Draven on the back. “Let’s go get your princess. I’ll even be nice, and I won’t charge for the ride back to Chandrila, how’s that sound?”

“Han, I know this is really hard for you,” Jyn said softly, placing a hand on his arm and looking with exaggerated supplication, “but please, could you try not to be a _massive_ pain in the arse for once?”

“An impossible request,” Chewie rumbled, as Han rolled his eyes.

“You know for a second there, I thought you were gonna be nice.”

“Shows how well you know me,” she muttered, rooting through the nearest downed guard for a weapon, coming up with a(n actually really well-crafted) short knife, as well as a keycard and pistol, which she tossed to Han; he looked at the pistol like it was covered in poison, but loaded it anyway. Cassian picked back up the spear he’d almost killed Draven with, and glanced at Chewie in apology.

“They were lightly-armed,” he said, and Chewie shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest, letting his biceps speak for themselves.

“Let’s move,” Draven said sharply.

Jyn’s preferred method _—_  and, it turned out, Cassian’s _—_  of getting through the airship would have been to hide the weapons, put their shackles back on (unlocked), and let Draven march them right up to the cellblock with the princess, keeping the other guards from prying too much by looking like they were supposed to be there. The keycard would get them through the doors they needed to get through, but if for some reason they accidentally tripped an alarm or got caught, well, they were armed now and could fight if they really had to.

Han’s method was… not that.

“You are going to get us all killed,” Cassian hissed, wrenching Han by the shirt around a corner while Chewie tossed a couple of stormtroopers into what looked like a maintenance closet. Han scoffed, and reloaded.

“Your way wasn’t gonna work anyway, and you know it,” he grumbled, rifling through the armor of nearest dead trooper, apparently for a better weapon; he continued muttering under his breath about single-shot pistols and who ever thought they were a good idea, but Jyn ignored him and snatched up a pair of truncheons from the same trooper.

“The beauty of _our_ method,” she snapped, extending them and brushing hair out of her eyes, “was that if it didn’t work, we’d just switch over and do it _this_ way.”

“Look, those first troopers were comin’ after us,” Han countered, kicking the trooper into the maintenance closet. “They saw the General’s friends back there and were about to sound the alarm. Running would’ve just meant having to come back through them _with_ the princess. Less chance of her gettin’ hurt this way.”

He… had a point; however, Jyn would, at this moment, rather die than admit it.

Another small squadron of stormtroopers rounded the corner; Jyn slammed one of the truncheons into the throat of the first one she saw, then shoved him roughly in Cassian’s direction, where the sharp end of his spear was already waiting. She ignored the sound it made when it went in, and went for the throat of the nearest one to her, cutting off the cry for help before it could start and using the momentum to wrench his helmet off; she used the heavy metal as an impromptu bludgeon, killing the trooper with his own armor.

Behind her, she could hear Han firing, but the bullets weren’t coming in her direction _—_   _great_ , she thought bitterly, _we’re surrounded —_  and Chewie, out of the corner of her eye, was bodily throwing stormtroopers against any hard surface he could, including other soldiers. Draven was the only one properly armed, but even with his sword and shield and heavy armor, he wasn’t doing any better against them than Chewie, which Jyn found darkly satisfying.

The heavy iron helmet was a more effective weapon than the truncheons, albeit harder to control; she cracked a trooper hard on the chin with it, exposing his throat, and she moved to draw her knife out of her belt, but  _—_

It was almost immediate: she saw the arrow in the trooper’s neck almost before she heard the _twang_ of the bowstring or felt the wind as it passed right beside her head, and glanced behind her in surprise. 

The trooper she’d shoved into Cassian’s spear had, apparently, carried a shortbow and quiver of arrows, which Cassian had abandoned the spear to pick up, and he was now on one knee, firing rapidly with _alarming_ accuracy.

She shook it off quickly, wrenching out the arrow and shoving the gurgling trooper hard against the wall, where he slumped down and went still; another trooper grabbed her from behind, but he was tall enough that she could see his head, and she brought the barbed tip of the arrow up, aiming for the eyehole of his helmet. He let go with a yell, and she whirled around with the iron helmet, hitting him full in the face with it and snapping the arrow. 

The last trooper fell quickly upon turning the corner, one arrow in the eyehole like Jyn had done, and another right after in his throat.

“I didn’t know you were an archer,” Jyn said, breathing heavily as Cassian stood up. He glanced up at her before going back to counting the arrows left in the quiver.

“I prefer it to the sword,” he admitted.

“Used to say he had the eyes of a hawk,” Draven added, with what looked like mild satisfaction, as he looted a second quiver off of one of the dead troopers on his side and tossed it to Cassian, who took and shouldered it, before nocking an arrow cautiously. “No one better to have up high, watching your back.”

“Sir,” was all he said in reply.

“So, now,” Han said, also breathing heavily as he reloaded a shotgun, “we can try and clean this mess up, or we can just make a run for it.”

Jyn looked around _—_  cleaning up wasn’t entirely out of the question, but even with all of them working together, it would probably take longer than they could really afford to spare. “I say run for it,” she replied, to a general muttering of agreement.

“The cell block isn’t far,” Draven said, gesturing for them to follow him. Jyn did, with some reluctance, glancing at Cassian as she passed him; he met her eyes briefly before indicating for her to go ahead, so he could apparently take the rear.

Mya had been an archer, too. It… made sense, in retrospect: the reason she had spoken of him so much, the reason he had known that she liked being on the water, why he cared to pay his respects, why she had known him so well, was all because they had worked closely together in training and during combat. Considering his skill and experience, he had probably trained Mya personally, although she’d taught herself the basics shortly after Lyra had died.

 _Eyes of a hawk —_  the man was a _sniper_. No wonder it had been easy for Vader to get him alone at the treaty-signing: he had abandoned his post to go after the queen, and his post would have been the highest ground, closer to the throne room than the rest. And he’d probably been alone, or nearly, from the start.

It had made him the perfect scapegoat _—_  unaccounted-for, unseen by both his own soldiers and the enemy. But they had needed an eyewitness, because Cassian was well-known for his loyalty and was close with the royal family; without a reliable witness, Leia and the remnants of the Knights of Alderaan would never have believed that he had done it.

Without another trustworthy soldier’s word, Draven would have staged a rescue mission, and the Knights had already proven that they were a highly-skilled strike force who could get into almost anywhere. They probably would have freed Cassian and taken his side _—_  and if it had gotten out that the Empire had offered a treaty only to murder Queen Breha, neutral parties like Chandrila and Corellia may have come to Alderaan’s aid. Certainly, Leia would have appealed to them, at least.

They had needed someone like Mya, and of course, Mya _—_  fiercely-loyal, a close friend of Cassian’s, a fellow archer who had probably also been up high, if not posted with him _—_  had gone after her missing Captain.

Vader had used their devotion to queen and comrade against them.

Where had he gotten that kind of information? How far into people's minds did his power reach? How were they supposed to get any leverage on the man?

(Her mind drifted to Luke in the mines, darkly wondering why Vader was manufacturing kyber.)

Leia was in her cell, unbound and composed, seated on the rough metal bench as though it was a throne. She looked up when Draven opened the door, and her eyes drifted over the group, landing on and narrowing at Cassian, but she stood without comment, and stalked forward.

“We should go,” she said coldly.

“Your Majesty,” Draven replied with a nod, and held out a sword to her. “I received this from Master Îmwe,” he went on, as Leia looked down at it and a strange, almost anguished, expression crossed over her face, then was schooled into impassivity. “It is rightfully yours.”

“We’re gonna have company,” Han called back, from where he and Chewie were watching the hall outside. “Looks like six, maybe seven.”

“Wait here, your Majesty,” Cassian said. “We will _—_ ”

“Just stay out of my way,” she snarled, snatching her father’s sword from Draven and shoving past Cassian. “I'll cut myself a path, I don’t need _you_.”

Cassian’s expression appeared carved out of stone: solid and unmoved and unliving. Jyn thought of what he’d said _—_   _I’ve known her Majesty since she was six_. She spared a moment to place a hand on his arm before passing him by, and he looked at her, for a moment, like a man on the edge of hope.

She didn’t have anything to offer beyond the moment of contact, but it seemed to be enough for him.

Leia really didn’t need much help, beyond Han and Cassian’s ranged support  _—_  she was a force unto herself, cutting with brutal efficiency and precision, and by the time Jyn and Chewie and Draven caught up, they’d wiped out the small squad of stormtroopers, and Leia was cleaning her sword before re-sheathing it.

Cassian took a step forward as though to speak, then stopped himself and let Draven pass him.

“We should make for the airship berth, your Majesty,” Draven said, and Leia nodded.

Han’s “plan” actually seemed to have paid off, since they only ran into a couple of stormtroopers, until they hit a wide-open area that branched off toward the bridge. Leia hesitated, gripping her sword and glaring in that direction.

“We could take the bridge,” she said quietly. “And at least hold it long enough to retrieve the kyber crystal.”

“Are you _insane?_ ” Han spluttered. “The bridge is gonna be _crawling_ with stormtroopers, are you _trying_ to get us all killed?” 

“We won’t die,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Once we take the Judge into our custody, the remaining troopers will stand down _—_ ”

“Or they’ll pump us full of lead,” Han cut her off, taking a step closer, although it was like it had been back in the waterway: Han took up more space, but _Leia_ commanded the room. Her eyes flashed. “And that’s _if_ we can take the Judge.”

“We can take Piett,” Leia snapped. “His parents bought him his rank, there’s no need _—_ ”

“He’s a _Judge Magister_ , your worship, I don’t think _—_ ”

“Don’t _ever_ interrupt me!” she snarled back, stepping forward with such ferocity that everyone except Han took a step back. “That kyber crystal is worth more than our lives! We _must_ get _—_ ”

“No rock is worth more than your life!” Han shouted, then seemed to catch what he’d said and deflated a little. “Sure as hell ain’t worth more than mine,” he added in a slightly-awkward mutter. Even Leia seemed taken off-guard by his words, but it just confirmed what Jyn had begun to suspect back in the dungeons: Han put a lot of effort into acting like a self-serving pirate, only in it for the money, but there was a genuinely good man under there.

“Then go,” Leia said finally, much calmer. “Get an airship ready. I’ll retrieve it myself if I must.”

“Your Majesty,” Draven said, taking a step forward, as Leia’s jaw tensed. “Attempting to take the bridge is far too dangerous.”

“Han is right,” Jyn added, and Leia turned to her, expression flashing from determination to distress and then to the hard sort of anger that seemed to be her default. “There’s six of us, and who knows how many of them. We don’t have enough support to pull that off. It’s only a thing, Leia.”

“It is not just a _thing_ ,” she countered, but sounded more desperate than convincing, and, in what appeared to be a last-ditch attempt to garner support, turned to Cassian. “ _You_ understand, don’t you?” she cried, and Jyn flinched. “They can’t be allowed to keep that crystal! They’ll _use_ it! No matter the cost, we _have_ to take it back!”

His expression remained carefully impassive, but Jyn could almost see the war going on behind it: supporting Leia would be going against his better judgment, but he desperately wanted her to trust him again. After a moment, he glanced away and shook his head. “I’m sorry, your Majesty,” he said, and her face froze over again. “It’s too dangerous.”

Leia turned away with a dark mutter of _I don’t know what I expected_ , but Draven was looking at Cassian with calculating eyes.

“They won’t use it,” a new voice said, and everyone drew on the newcomer, but it was only Luke, and  _—_

“ _Bodhi!_ ” she gasped, and met him in the middle, wrapping her arms tightly around his stomach. 

“Jyn, _gods_ ,” he muttered, returning the hug with even more force. “Don’t scare me like that again.”

“What did you say?” Leia asked, stepping forward, and Luke held up both hands beseechingly.

“They won’t use it,” he repeated, and Jyn finally let go of Bodhi to look at him. “They're sending it to Eadu for research.”

“That doesn’t sound much like not using it, to me,” Draven muttered, but both Jyn and Luke shook their heads.

“It means we have time,” he clarified. “They won’t use it as a weapon until they’ve gotten all they can learn out of it at the lab. Come with me,” he went on, taking a step closer to Leia, but she, Draven, and Cassian all raised their weapons, the other two placing themselves between the princess and Luke. He stopped, holding his hands up again. “Look, Corellia is looking for any excuse to start a war with us. If you go to the Resistance, they’ll join up and say it’s to help you, but it’ll just be a bloodbath.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Leia snapped. “I _want_ Corellia to ally with us.”

Luke looked frustrated. “They won’t ally with _you_ , don’t you get it?” he replied, exasperated. “They’ll use you as an excuse, but Alderaan will be the battlefield. _Your_ people will pay the price for _their_ war. We have to stop it before it starts.” 

Doubt passed over Leia’s face, and she glanced over at Draven, who seemed deep in thought, then to Jyn, who gave her a look, trying to say _he has a point_ with her eyes.

A noise in the direction of the bridge distracted everyone, and Luke shook his head to clear it. “We don’t have time for this right now. They know you’ve escaped, but I think I can hold them up and give you time to get off the cruiser.”

“Why help us when I’m not joining you?” Leia asked, both expression and stance guarded, but Luke only looked troubled, as though weighing his thoughts.

“You and Captain Andor were both declared dead,” he answered slowly. “I’m wondering why, what my father has to gain from it. You, I could get, but the Captain?” he indicated to Cassian, expression becoming even more disquieted. “There’s something else going on here, and I wanna know what.”

“So you can help him with his cause?” Leia challenged, but Luke shook his head.

“My cause is _peace_ ,” he said fervently. “The Emperor…” he cut himself off, then shook his head. “I can make my father listen, if I can come up with some other way. You’ll help me, right?”

“Your father?” Cassian countered with uncharacteristic venom, stepping forward. “You think you can make _Vader_ listen to you?”

“I think I can make _Anakin_ listen to me,” Luke corrected, a little heated. “He’s _not_ too far gone. Princess, we want the same thing. We should work together, we _—_ ”

“ _I will not ally with the Empire_ ,” Leia snarled, teeth clenched. Luke frowned, then seemed to deflate some.

“Okay,” he replied after a moment, shrugging with less care than his expression implied. “You should run, then. The airship berth is empty, they’re occupied up at the bridge, they think you’re going that way. You can get away, if you go now.” He paused, then held something out to Bodhi. “You should take this,” he said softly, and dropped the piece of synthetic kyber into his hand. “I’m not sure how much good it will be, but it might help.” He seemed to hesitate, then offered Bodhi a tense smile with a quiet, “Be careful,” before turning away.

Leia’s hard expression flickered as Luke brushed past them, toward the bridge. 

“He seemed sincere,” Draven said slowly, and Leia shook her head, eyes on the stone in Bodhi’s hand.

“Let’s go,” she replied.

.

“I feel like I missed… a lot,” Bodhi muttered, back at the Marquis’s estate, while Draven left to hide the little skiff they’d escaped on. He’d made a comment to Leia before going, about _seeking out other options,_ which sounded ominous to Jyn. “How did you end up running around with a dead princess and a dead trai _—_   _not_ a traitor? I’m still fuzzy on that.”

“Met the Princess in the waterway after the party, before we got captured,” she answered in a low voice. “Found Cassian in the Cadera dungeons, and… he helped us escape.” It wasn’t _quite_ a lie, but she wasn’t really keen on elaborating to Bodhi the kind of conditions Cassian had been kept in.

“And the part where he didn’t have anything to do with the Queen’s death?” 

“Long story,” she sighed, “I’m sure he’ll explain it to Leia. Dunno if she’ll believe him, I didn’t at first.”

“What changed your mind?” he asked, watching Cassian’s back warily; the Captain had been oddly… _stiff_ since Bodhi and Luke had run into them, stiff like he’d been in the Resistance hideout in the waterway _—_  that blank-slate look on his face, as though there was a lot going on in his head, but he was being careful not to let any of it show. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, although Jyn would hazard that it had something to do with Luke’s words.

“Chirrut,” she replied. “And… gut feeling. Did Luke tell you anything about his plans or his father?”

“Not much,” Bodhi answered. “Only that he’s trying to undo the damage Vader has done. The way he talks about him…” he trailed off for a moment, brow furrowed, then shook his head. “It almost sounds like he’s possessed. Vader, I mean,” he added. 

“Luke thinks his father is possessed?” she asked incredulously, and Bodhi shook his head. 

“Not literally, I don’t think,” he replied, cringing. “Corrupted, might be a better word. Says he used to be a hero of the common people, ended slavery in his homeland, that kind of thing. Dunno what changed, he didn’t really say much about Vader _now_. I think…” he started, then stopped himself with a frown and a small sigh. “I don't know, Luke’s convinced he can save him.”

“Then he’s a fool,” Leia said abruptly, startling both of them; Jyn hadn’t noticed her listening. “A well-meaning one, maybe,” she added, crossing her arms, “but still a fool. Vader ordered the attack on Jedha, there’s nothing good about him.” 

“People can surprise you,” Han said, although he sounded more like a devil’s advocate than like he really believed it.

“You think there’s good in Vader?” she countered, sounding offended, but Han only shrugged. 

“I think nothing’s final ‘till you’re dead,” he answered. “So long as you’re still breathing, you got a chance.”

“We’re talking about good and evil in the hearts of men,” Leia replied, tone dripping disdain, “not escaping a dungeon with all your limbs attached.”

Before Han could retaliate, they had arrived at Mothma’s drawing room. The woman herself was inside, looking regal and untouchable with a sheaf of papers in front of her, and she looked up when they walked in. For the very first time, Jyn saw an actual emotion cross over the Marquis’s face, of genuine relief.

“Princess Leia,” she said quietly. “I am so glad to see you.”

“Marquis,” she answered, expression stony.

“I expect you have questions for me,” Mothma said, standing and gesturing for Leia to be seated.

“Yes,” Leia replied, ignoring the offer, and gesturing at Cassian. “For one, why did you send _him?_ ”

Mothma’s eyes passed over the group. “He came to me,” she replied after a moment. “Seeking help to free you.”

“And you just… sent him straight to me?” she snapped back. “He’s a traitor!”

“Is he?”

Both of them turned to Cassian, who let out a long, low sigh. “Your Majesty, I did not kill Queen Breha,” he said quietly, and Leia gave him a look of almost-mocking attentiveness. He explained the story _—_  with more details this time, how he’d been ambushed, the weight of Vader’s presence and how he’d put the words in his mouth. Mothma looked thoughtful, but Leia, predictably, looked entirely unconvinced.

“So, now Vader has mind-control?” she sneered, and Jyn looked between the two of them.

“That’s… quite the tale,” Mothma said magnanimously.

“Yeah,” Jyn cut in, drawing the attention to her. “Be pretty stupid to try and sell it if it was a lie.” When neither of them responded, Jyn shrugged. “I mean, come on,” she said, with a little laugh that was a lot more careless than she felt, “you’re trying to sell a lie, you gotta keep it believable. Han?”

Han raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “First rule of getting outta hot water,” he said, “don’t make the story too complicated. If it were me,” he went on, with a vague gesture toward Cassian, “I’d’ve just said the witness was lying. Paid off, brainwashed, pick your poison. Hell, I’d try ‘it was my evil twin’ before I’d try _that_ one.”

Mothma gave him a tight smile. “You certainly have a… unique perspective, Captain Solo.”

“You believed this?” Leia asked Jyn, who glanced at Cassian, then back at her.

“Not at first,” she replied. “But Chirrut… he said that he’s heard of it before, it has to do with the dark side of the Force.”

 _And_ , she didn’t say, _the man we found in the dungeons was no queenslayer_.

“General Draven should return shortly,” Mothma said. “Captain Andor can remain under his watch.”

Leia glared, but turned and, with what appeared to be great difficulty, said, “Fine. My next question is why you declared that I had committed suicide.”

“It was Vader’s suggestion,” Mothma answered promptly. 

“And you agreed to it?” Leia challenged, but Mothma didn’t rise to the tone.

“I did,” she replied evenly. “If it was widely-believed that you were dead, you needn’t fear pursuit. I suspected that he had other reasons, of course,” she added, folding her hands into her sleeves, “but I was concerned with, if you were alive and well-hidden, seeing to it that you stayed that way.”

Leia looked dissatisfied with the answer, but didn’t press it. “That’s in the past now,” she said, somewhat begrudgingly. “With your support, and the support of the Resistance, I can declare Alderaan’s independence and retake my throne. You signed the surrender, my survival invalidates it.”

“Do you have proof?” Mothma asked, and even Jyn flinched. “I thought not,” she murmured, then looked around the group. “Without proof, I cannot support your claim to the throne. We need to lay low for the moment, consolidate our forces and gather our strength. We do nothing until the time is right.”

“Marquis _—_ ” Leia spluttered, but Mothma shook her head.

“Your _Highness_ ,” she said, with deliberate emphasis that made Leia flinch, “now is not the time for rash action.” With that, she straightened and gestured to the guards. “See to it that rooms are arranged for the Princess and her guests. We will continue this discussion later,” she added to Leia, “when we have more allies.”

Jyn paused at the door, watching the Princess carefully: her face was composed and blank of all emotion, which _—_  even to Jyn, who hardly knew her _—_  looked wrong. Leia was a force of nature, and to see the hope fall away from her eyes like that was… unsettling.

“We’ll figure something out,” she said softly, but although Leia spared her a glance, she didn’t respond.

.

Deep into the night, long after she had “retired” to one of the rooms that she had once stayed in as a child _—_  and loved, she remembered, loved the soaring ceilings and tall windows that opened onto balconies overlooking both the mountain and the skies below _—_  but which now twisted her gut to be in, Leia slipped through the halls of Mothma’s estate and made her way out into the airship berth.

She would not sit in an ornate bedroom while her people lived in tent cities and waited in despair for someone to save them from the Empire. She would not hide here in a gilded cage while they starved. No bed was soft enough, no landscape beautiful enough, to distract her. 

She had only just settled into the pilot’s seat of the _Millennium Falcon_ when she heard a noise behind her, and cursed under her breath.

Someone had followed her. Leia scowled at the console, then gripped the hilt of her sword and tensed, preparing to strike, but  _—_

“What are you doing?” Jyn asked, and Leia bit her tongue.

Jyn _—_  the thief, the rebel, the ally. But even though she had said they’d figure something out, Leia didn’t quite trust her.

“I’m leaving,” she replied shortly. “Deep in the desert, beyond the sandsea, lies the tomb of Silara, the Dynast-Queen. She left a crystal there, which will prove my birthright, since _you_ got the other one stolen.”

To her mild annoyance, Jyn didn’t rise to the remark. “Do you know how to fly this thing?” she asked, sounding deeply skeptical. “Because I’m not sure I even trust _Han_ at the controls.”

“I’ll -- find a way,” Leia muttered, looking with dwindling hope for anything familiar, but Han’s rustbucket was a maze of buttons and knobs, some of which were helpfully labeled with what Leia was reasonably sure were lies _—_  she had never seen an altimeter with a manual adjustment function, for one _—_  although she would hardly call herself an expert (or, to be honest, even proficient) pilot. “I’m sure I can get this to Aldera in one piece, and then hire a proper pilot to take me there.”

“With what money?”

Leia scowled. “Do you have a better idea?” she snapped, finally half-turning to see Jyn, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. “I will not sit here and _hide_ until somebody else decides what I’m going to do.”

Jyn paused, then made a thoughtful sound. “Bodhi is a pretty good pilot,” she said slowly, walking forward. “I’m sure he’ll help us.”

“Us?”

“You planned to cross the sandsea and go tomb-raiding alone?”

She cringed a little. “If need be.”

“Well, it doesn’t,” Jyn replied as though it were obvious, and joined her at the helm. Leia looked up at her, some of the tension draining out of her body in a long, slow breath.

“Thank you,” she said, with feeling. “I… I’m sorry if I’ve been… cold, but _—_ ”

“This is real heartwarming,” Han said loudly from behind them, and both Leia and Jyn winced. “But you’re in my seat.”

Leia drew herself up in the seat. “I am going to _—_ ”

“Not my problem,” he cut her off, and fury spiked through her like lighting, even as Jyn started with a, _Han —_

“What part of _don’t ever interrupt me_ did you _not_ understand?” Leia shouted, standing and whirling around to face the sky pirate.

“You’re mad that I’m not bowing?” he replied, incredulous and affronted. “You’re tryin' to steal my ship, your worship, sorry if I’m not throwing you a damn _parade!_ ”

“That is _not_ my title!” she countered, knowing that it was a weak response, but _gods above_ , the snide way he said _your_ _worship_ grated on every single nerve in her body.

“Your Majesty _—_ ” Cassian ( _goddamned_ ) Andor started, pushing past Han and into the cockpit, but he was cut off by the sky pirate himself.

“That ain’t her title, either,” he snapped sullenly, and Cassian shot him a glare of such ice that he actually took a step backward.

“You can stop talking now,” he said coldly.

“Don’t you dare try to talk me out of this,” she growled, hands clenched into fists, and Cassian’s eyes softened when he turned back to her, which almost irked her as much as Han _—_  he was a traitor, he was a _—_  a _monster_ , he wasn’t supposed to  _—_

(Since she was old enough to remember, Leia had cried three times in her life. First when her father was killed, then when her mother was murdered, and then _—_  in the darkness, hating herself for feeling anything at all _—_  when she was told that he had been executed. Cassian had been there almost as long as her parents, he had been her mentor and brother and protector and best friend, always there whenever she had needed him. To hear that he had betrayed them had cut her open, but to hear that he was dead had hit her so hard it left her breathless. Even though he was a traitor, she had always loved him and looked up to him, and…

The truth was, deep down, Leia had never _quite_ believed it. She had never _wanted_ to believe it. His story now was outlandish, but it made more sense to her heart than the one where he had murdered her mother.)

“The Empire will be hunting for you, you’ll be safest here,” Cassian said, holding out a hand. “Tell me what you need, and I will retrieve it for you.”

She took a deep breath in a sincere if failed attempt to calm herself down, and shook her head. “None but the direct descendants of Queen Silara will be suffered inside her tomb. I have to go, myself.”

“Then please, allow me to escort you.”

It… stung, and at the same time… didn’t.

“Yeah, well, good luck finding a ship,” Han interjected, arms crossed, and Leia’s temper flashed back to him. “‘Cause I’m done with all of you.”

She took a deep breath, then spoke through gritted teeth. “The treasure within the Dynast-Queen’s tomb is said to be priceless. Take me there, and it’s yours.”

“Another word for priceless is worthless,” Han countered. “I’ve got no use for treasure I can’t fence.”

Leia growled, deep in her throat, fighting against powerful, rising fury; before she could unload on the sky pirate, though, Jyn interjected. “What if you kidnapped her?” she asked, and everyone in the cockpit turned to her, where she was sitting in the co-pilot’s chair, leaning up against the headrest. “You kidnap her,” she explained, gesturing. “And “ransom” her back to the country when she’s ready to retake the throne. You get your payment when she’s safe back in Aldera, and she’ll have plenty of gold then to offer you.”

“Yes,” Leia said, cutting in before Andor _—_  who looked deeply mistrustful of this plan _—_  could argue. “I have a large inheritance. Much of it will be required for reconstruction, but there is more than enough to pay you for your help.”

Han seemed to be mulling it over, but he didn’t look quite certain. “The price on my head is high enough,” he said finally, and Leia scoffed.

“Is _that_ all? As Queen, I can make the bounty on your head disappear.”

He watched her carefully for a moment, then: “All right, then. That’s in addition to the payment, mind.”

Leia rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

“We should leave while it’s still dark, then,” Chewie said from the hallway behind them, startling everyone in the cockpit, including Han. “Like real kidnappers.”

“What are you doing here?” Jyn asked, but she was looking past Chewie, to her _—_  brother? friend? lover? _—_  companion, Bodhi, who had apparently come with the co-pilot. “Mothma said she’d give you passage back to Aldera.”

“You’re not gonna leave me behind again,” he replied, sounding much more certain than he looked.

“Yeah?” Han asked skeptically. “What is it you’re good at? Besides getting kidnapped.”

Bodhi glanced at Jyn, then back up to Han, and started speaking rapidly _—_  apparently before Jyn, already half out of her chair with fury on in her eyes, could start on the sky pirate: “I’ve been smuggling supplies into Aldera for years,” he replied. “I can get us past any Imperial guard, and I’ve… well, Maz has contacts all over the continent. They know my name, though,” he added, losing some steam. “They’ll work with me.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Jyn said, shooting Han a glare that made Leia feel just a little bit warm and fuzzy inside. “Plus, he’s probably a better pilot than you.”

“Oh, is he?” Han started, but Chewie stepped in and pushed past Han, gesturing gently for Jyn to move out of his seat.

“It’s decided,” he said firmly. “We leave now, before they notice she’s gone.”

Han growled, but Leia ignored him, stepping away from the controls and _—_  she ought to thank Andor for his support, but… she looked at Jyn instead.

“I won’t forget your help,” she said quietly, and Jyn shrugged. “I mean that. You _will_ be rewarded.”

“Getting the Imps out of my city is reward enough,” she replied.

“Maybe for you,” she countered; Jyn looked up. “But _I_ refuse to see this kind of loyalty go unrewarded.”

Jyn watched her carefully for a moment, then glanced around the cockpit as Han and Chewie got the ship started. “Then why punish Cassian?” she asked, and Leia flinched. “He’s telling the truth, and I think you know it.”

“Cassian Andor is a very good liar,” she replied tightly, but Jyn shook her head.

“If you say so, Princess,” she said, and brushed past her, to sit with Bodhi, leaving Leia alone with her thoughts.

.

“Why are we stopping?” Leia demanded, startling Jyn out of the half-doze she had fallen into, head on Bodhi’s shoulder. Han’s ship may have been a rickety deathtrap, but the steady hum of her engines reverberated through the hull and had put most of them to sleep; although, considering that Jyn had slept in an actual bed for only one of the past seven days, it hadn’t taken much.

“This is as far as we fly,” Han replied in a mutter, hitting a lot of different buttons and levers; he had the long-suffering expression of the one person who’d had to stay up while everyone else slept, and was feeling _especially_ grouchy about it. “Past this ridge, we’re in the sandsea.”

“And we can’t fly across the sandsea?” Leia challenged, and Han made a noise in the back of his throat.

“No, we cannot,” he said sourly. In the following silence, something in the console shocked Han, and he cursed under his breath, trailing off into dark grumbling about _no reward is worth this_. 

“I’m waiting for that explanation,” Leia drawled, and Han shot her a glare.

“What are you doing?” Jyn asked muzzily, trying to get a look at what Han was messing with while stumbling to her feet, still disoriented.

“There’s a _—_ ” he cursed again, but then seemed to get what he was going for “ _—_ a lever,” he said finally, as… something shimmered in the air. “Makes the ship invisible from the outside.” 

“Why haven’t we been using it?” Bodhi asked on a yawn, and Han coughed.

“‘Cause it won’t work while she’s airborne. Been trying to fix it for five years,” he added, and then, finally seeming to lose his patience with the tapping of Leia’s foot, turned to the princess. “Can I help you, your worshipfulness?”

Leia’s eyes narrowed. “All I am asking for is a simple explanation for why we can’t fly.”

“Look, that sandsea’s eaten tougher ships than mine,” he replied brusquely, pushing past her.

“Are you saying you can’t brave the vast expanse of totally clear skies?” she countered, making to follow, but Chewie put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head.

“It’s the sand,” he said. “You’ll see.”

Cassian had already gotten off the ship and was looking eastward, by the time Jyn staggered out into the harsh sunlight.

“We still have a few hours before dark,” Han said, tossing a pack onto the ground with a grunt. “We should get as far as we can into the sea before making camp, we’ll be safer that way.”

“I don’t think we’ve been pursued by the Empire,” Leia said, but glanced up into the sky anyway. Han shrugged, and started to respond, but Cassian spoke before he could.

“The Empire, no,” he said, still looking east, toward the city, and gestured to where a small, lone craft was coming toward them, before pulling out his bow and nocking an arrow. He went a little ways forward, into the scrub, and just sort of… melted into the background. Because Jyn had watched him and knew exactly where he had gone, she could pick him out of the shadows, but to Bodhi, who had just joined her _—_  

“Where’d he go?”

She started to gesture toward him, but it became moot point, as Cassian stepped back out from cover to greet the craft, returning the arrow to his quiver; figuring that he must have recognized the craft, Jyn climbed up the ridge to join him, trailed by Bodhi and Leia.

For the second time in as many days, Jyn was startled by General Draven in Imperial garb, this time stepping out of the little skiff with a sour glance toward Cassian. “I had expected to meet with you at the Marquis’s estate,” he said coolly. 

“Her Majesty had other plans,” Cassian replied.

“Of course she did,” Draven muttered under his breath.

“Have you found what you were looking for, General?” Leia asked, stepping forward. “Another method of restoring the throne?”

Draven hesitated, then nodded. “Yes,” he replied. “But we need to retrieve the second crystal first.”

“Then let’s go,” she said curtly, turning on her heel and making for the other side of the ridge, down from the mere desert into the Tatooine sandsea.

Jyn had studied it, briefly, in school _—_  a vast expanse of trackless dunes that marked a sort of no-man’s-land between Alderaan and Corellia; while the territory belonged to Alderaan, the roads through it had been built by Corellia. No one had ever really fought over it, though, because there was nothing _to_ fight over: the harsh land couldn’t grow anything, the shifting sands left no foundation for building, and if there were oases deep within it, they’d never been mapped.

She had never seen it, or even heard it really described, and so she was taken off-guard when she made it over the ridge and onto what could only be called the beach. 

The golden sand was so fine-grained that it ebbed and flowed like water in the lightest breeze; like a sort of coarse dust, it had long-since exposed the bedrock they stood on, carving away all but the hardest stone. She saw what Han and Chewie had meant, why they had to cross on foot: the delicate parts of an airship engine would be shredded by the dust, kicked up high into the atmosphere by strong winds, and Han’s ship was already held together mostly by stubborn pride. 

Jyn looked out over the expanse _—_  it was gold from horizon to horizon, cut through with the track of weathered steel that made up the road. The air itself seemed to shimmer with the fine dust, which was a pretty effect for something that would eat through iron.

“Be careful,” Cassian said, startling her; he was reaching out as if to spot her in case she stumbled. “The sandsea will swallow you quick if you aren't.”

“It takes only seconds,” Draven added, then gestured ahead of them. “The Corellians, hundreds of years ago, built roads through the sea. We follow them.”

“I've heard stories of territorial tribes out in the sea,” Leia added thoughtfully. “They guard their borders closely.”

“Yeah,” Han said, “I've heard of 'em, too. They ride sandfishes and breathe under the waves.”

Leia narrowed her eyes at him, then, in a slow voice: “I think you're mocking me.”

Han looked at her, eyebrows raised. “No, no,” he replied hastily. “I'm serious. A couple of guys we know from Bespin _—_ ” he gestured at Chewie “ _—_ they say that's why nobody's ever gotten into Silara’s tomb. I dunno what the hell a sandfish looks like, or how they're supposed to breathe, but that's the story, at least.”

“Oh,” Leia said, still peering at him suspiciously. 

“What are they called?” he asked Chewie, furrowing his brow. “Ja… Java? Jakka? Ja…” 

“Jawa,” Chewie replied. “Not human.”

“If we stay on the road, we should be safe,” Draven replied loudly, as though he could drown out the threat, and Han scoffed.

“Yeah, sure, that’s how it works,” he muttered, double-checking his gun and taking point. To Leia, he added: “Keep an eye out, is all I’m saying.”

Night fell fast and hard on the sandsea, and this far out, there was nothing but them: no lights on the horizon, and only the sound of the fire crackling and wind moving. For all its golden beauty, the sandsea was lifeless; it made sense, Jyn supposed, since there was no water or soil.

“So, how do the Jawa live out here?” she asked, tugging a blanket closer around her shoulders; Han had kept a lot of supplies on his ship _—_  he’d explained only with a dark glance and _look, you never know —_  but they were still rationing food and water, and would be either getting _very_ cuddly or taking shifts with the three bedrolls.

(Honestly, Jyn was impressed that he’d had that much.)

She, Han and Chewie, and Cassian had taken the first watch; although both Cassian and Draven had commented that it wasn’t “efficient” for half of them to be up at one time, the dearth of sleeping supplies had made efficiency take a backseat. Jyn had poached a blanket from the cockpit and had already declared her intentions to use it so they could avoid the argument over who would have to go without a bedroll.

She wished she hadn’t slept on the _Falcon_. Now, she was awake and it was dead-silent and dark and the sandsea was the sort of place that echoed with ghosts; without anything else to focus on, her mind kept trying to drift back to synthetic kyber, Eadu, Galen.

( _Everything I do, I do for you and your sister. Stardust, you’re the light of my life, I couldn’t bear to see that light go out_.)

(He hadn’t even said goodbye. That was all he’d said: _I couldn’t bear to see that light go out_.)

(It was only when Mya died that she had fully understood: he couldn’t bear to _see_ it. That was all.)

“I don’t even know if they’re real,” Han admitted, carefully cleaning his dismantled rifle. Jyn wrenched herself back to the present, and ignored the sensation of eyes on her. “But it gets a little… ah, livelier, further in,” he said.

“Oh?” she asked, and he nodded absently.

“Yeah, once you get past beggar’s canyon, it starts getting greener. Keep going west, you hit the steppe, and then you’re in Corellia.”

“You ever been there?” Jyn asked, and he peered down the barrel of his gun before frowning at the rag he’d been using.

“ _From_ there,” he admitted. “I’ve crossed the sandsea before, going the other way. That was just before I met this one,” he added, indicating to Chewie, who made a small _hmm_ noise.

“How long does it take?” Cassian asked, and Han shrugged. 

“Depends on how desperate you are to get to the other side,” he answered. “Took me a day and a half, but I didn’t make any stops.”

“What?” Jyn asked, aghast; the sun out here was _brutal —_  crossing without rest would have been borderline suicidal. “Were you being _chased?_ ”

“Not to put too fine a point on it…” he muttered with a wince and a half-nod, by way of explanation, then tossed the dirty rag aside. “Should take _us_ three or four days.”

“Did you pass Silara’s tomb then?” Cassian asked, and he shrugged.

“Probably,” he answered, pulling out a fresh rag and dabbing oil on it. “You gotta be looking for it, you know? I wasn’t.”

It occurred to her that, except Bodhi, she hadn’t known any of these people longer than a week, and was now committed to _—_  what, exactly? How far was she willing to follow this?

 _All the way_ , she thought, almost against her will. Leia had promised that her loyalty wouldn’t go unrewarded, which didn’t matter as much to Jyn as the implication that Leia was expecting Jyn to be there for the duration, or was at least hoping that she would.

And… Chirrut had said that the Force had plans for her. Jyn wasn’t sure what would happen if she tried to back out now, but it probably wouldn’t go well, and… she tried to tell herself that this wasn’t going to take them anywhere near Coruscant or Eadu, and it was _almost_ convincing.

She looked up and, over the firelight, met Cassian’s eyes.

.

Three miserable, sandy, hot, wind- and sun-burnt days of travel later, they finally made it to Silara’s tomb. 

“There’s supposed to be some kind of guardian…” Leia mused, taking three tentative steps out from the cave and into the open space; it looked like it had once been some kind of parade ground. 

“Guardian?” she asked, joining Leia and drawing her dagger, just in case. “What kind of guardian?”

“I don’t know,” Leia replied, but after another moment passed and nothing happened, she glanced at Jyn, then at the others, and shrugged. “Maybe it was just rumor, like the Jawa.” She paused, then groaned a little. “I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

“Well,” Han declared, shouldering his rifle and squaring his shoulders, “only one way to find out.”

They heard the call before they saw the creature, and Han _—_  either because he was nearer to it and saw it first or simply because he had long-honed instincts regarding such things _—_  was already sprinting by the time it registered to Jyn what she had heard: the screech of a massive bird of prey.

It was _much_ larger than any eagle or hawk she’d ever seen before, with striking golden wings _—_  near-blinding in the high noon sun _—_  and talons that, at a panicked glance, were probably three feet long and presumably razor-sharp. Several different voices shouted _run!_ at the same time; Cassian and Chewie both fired at it, and one of them hit a wing, although Jyn didn’t wait around to see what the effect was, beyond a short, narrow arc of blood and another ear-splitting screech.

Han made it to the massive stone doors first, although Draven was a close second and Leia was on his heels, the rest of them following in an undignified heap; Han and Draven both tried desperately _—_  and, for once, together _—_  to get the doors open while Chewie and Cassian fired again, both missing this time.

“The doors won’t open!” Han shouted; Cassian took aim _—_  it looked like he was trying for an eye _—_  and let loose another arrow, but the bird was too fast and moved too erratically, and the shot went wide; Chewie, more practically, aimed for the chest, but the bolt simply bounced off. Han abandoned to door to Draven, Jyn, and Bodhi, and began firing at the bird, which continued to shriek. 

Jyn couldn’t even focus on the doors for that _screeching —_  it was _primal_ , ancient humans had probably once lived in terror of that noise, it was so loud that it almost bypassed the ears entirely, went straight through the spine and locked up the muscles. She was just about to grab the synthetic kyber from Bodhi, in a last-ditch effort to get rid of the avion, when Leia shoved past them, placed both hands on the double doors, and pushed.

The doors opened immediately at her touch.

All seven of them scrambled into the tomb and slammed the doors behind them; the creature’s muffled shrieks continued from outside, then tapered off. For a long moment, they all stood in the cavernous entranceway, gasping for breath; Bodhi and Cassian both were leaning with their backs against the door, Chewie had dropped his crossbow and had both hands on his knees while he tried to regain his breath, Jyn sank to the floor and Draven was on one knee. Only Leia seemed remotely collected, and even she had a hand over her chest and was breathing heavily.

“Right,” Han declared after a long moment, reaching out a hand to help Jyn to her feet. “I'm calling _not-it_ on going back out there first.”

“At least you have a _gun_ ,” Jyn replied incredulously, and Han gave her a short _ha!_

“These are small-caliber bullets, sweetheart,” he said sourly. “You see the _size_ of that thing? I don’t think it even _noticed_.”

“Okay,” Bodhi said, straightening up and pointing at one of the statues lining the walls, “what you do is, you get one of those spears, and take a running leap…”

“Yeah, that’ll work,” Han drawled, rolling his eyes, and Bodhi shrugged.

“Well, no, but you'd die like a man,” he replied bluntly, and, out of the corner of her eye, Jyn saw Leia’s shoulders jerk with a suppressed laugh. Even Han snorted. “And it'd be too distracted eating you to chase the rest of us.”

“Alternatively,” Jyn offered, holding up a hand, “we can throw Draven at it.”

“We _could_ throw Draven at it,” Han mused, earning himself a glare from the man himself.

“This banter is pointless,” he snapped, and Han looked at him with a long-suffering expression. “Your Majesty, I suggest we leave the _thieves_ behind. Myself, you, and Captain Andor are _more_ than capable of retrieving the proof of your birth without them.”

“Boy, you’re fun to be around,” Han deadpanned. “A real bucket o’ laughs.”

“It was his sense of humor that got him through the war, you see,” Bodhi added helpfully, and Jyn snickered.

“His rapier-sharp wit kept his soldiers’ spirits high,” she said, with total innocence.

Cassian looked deep in thought, a hand held over his mouth introspectively, although Jyn was reasonably sure he was just trying not to laugh. Finally, he looked up, and _—_  she noted _—_  very carefully _not_ at the three of them. “The more people we have with us, the safer we will be,” he said evenly.

“We can take him,” Draven suggested, gesturing at Chewie, who shook his head and jerked a thumb at Han.

“I go where he goes.”

“General, I appreciate your faith in our abilities,” Leia said magnanimously. “But I agree with Captain Andor. The more support we have, the better.”

“See, General, she likes us better than you,” Han said, and, without a missing a beat, Leia kept going:

“Although I wouldn’t be opposed to gagging Captain Solo.”

Han, to his credit, appeared to be biting his tongue, although Jyn could almost _hear_ the suggestive retort that he was smart enough not to let pass his lips; he waited until Leia was well enough out of earshot before muttering, “Hey, if that’s what you’re into…” to himself.

Jyn snorted and patted him on the back as they walked down a wide set of stairs to a long stretch of stone that seemed to extend over a bottomless pit, lit by large braziers of magical flame on either side of the walkway. The whole place smelled of oil and dust and stone, and deep age. Out of curiosity, Jyn dropped a pebble over the side of the walkway and into the abyss: as it fell, it lit up more braziers below them, illuminating part of what appeared to be a very long, gently-sloping spiral down to the bottom.

“I bet that’s where we’ll find the Queen, huh?” she asked, and Leia looked down.

“You’re probably right,” she replied, looking around _—_  all around them were more walkways, extending nearly to the ceiling, although there didn’t appear to be any way up to them. Leia gestured to them. “If I remember correctly, those are the catacombs of the Dynast-Queen’s army,” she said conversationally, and Jyn blinked.

“Her army?” she repeated, and Leia nodded.

“This valley was the site of a great battle,” she explained. “It’s said that Silara used kyber crystals to unite her people and defend her country here, it’s where she took up the mantle of Dynast-Queen. She had her tomb built here so that she could be buried with all her soldiers who died honorably in the war when she took her throne.”

A heavy, uncomfortable silence fell, and in the depths of a tomb underneath a lifeless desert, the silence was _absolute_. Except for the avion, they were the only living things for miles in every direction.

“Hey, so, ah, what are the odds we’re gonna get swarmed by the, uh, the angry dead?” Han asked finally, coughing a little and gesturing vaguely with his gun. “You know, the ones you said were under the Kessel passage?” 

Jyn winced. “Chirrut said you find them in places like battlefields,” she answered.

“They’ll leave us alone, right?” Bodhi asked, gesturing ahead of them. “‘Cause we’ve got Leia. Right?”

“Right,” Leia replied firmly. “It’s said that only Silara’s direct descendants are suffered within her tomb. It would follow that they won't attack me.”

“Yeah, but Silara ruled about two thousand years ago,” Han countered. “She’s probably got lots of direct descendants by now, you know?”

“Stop making this worse,” Bodhi hissed.

“Why would they be angry?” Cassian asked quietly, and Jyn glanced back at him, so he elaborated. “You said _angry_ dead. Underneath the Cadera dungeons were the battlefields of a lost war, refugees from Jedha City who died with their country. This is a burial ground for a victorious army, buried in honor with their queen.”

“Good point,” Bodhi said, with somewhat-forced brightness. “I like the sound of that.”

Jyn hung back so that she was walking beside Cassian, at the rear.

“Do you actually believe that, or were you just trying to calm everyone down?” she asked quietly, and he gave her a meaningful look and drew an arrow, holding it loosely against the bowstring. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she muttered, tightening her grip on her dagger. A few moments passed before he glanced sideways, half toward her and half to the floor.

“So, what's here for you?” he asked in a low voice. “If your goal was to keep your… friend safe, you should have returned to Aldera.”

It wasn't judgmental _—_  although she noted his split-second hesitation about _friend —_  but simply a statement of fact. Jyn made a face.

“Leia… she needs all the help she can get,” she answered slowly, measuring the words. “And anyway, the Empire took everything from me, I want… I want them gone, all of them.”

“ _All_ of them?” he repeated, raising an eyebrow, but whatever he was thinking, he didn't elaborate on it; she got the impression that he was somehow onto her, and she couldn't quite pass it off as mere paranoia. Cassian was highly perceptive, and he paid attention. It made him a very specific sort of dangerous.

“Their leadership, at least.” 

“Even Luke?”

She opened her mouth to reply, but then closed it and gave him a reproachful look. “You know what I mean.”

“Do I?” he asked, and she glanced at him; now he was looking at her. “Who is it you really want dead?”

She hesitated, then replied: “Orson Krennic. And… Galen Erso.”

It was surprisingly easy to say, even as it cut her throat up on the way out. She had spent many afternoons at his feet, playing with his models and samples; in retrospect, she wondered if one of them might have been the stone that killed Jedha City.

“Why?”

“They run Eadu Laboratory,” she answered. “They're manufacturing kyber, making weapons that would destroy the world.”

He paused, watching her carefully for a moment, before murmuring, “Was that really an answer?”

Jyn blinked, and let out a small, breathless laugh. He really _was_ much sharper-eyed than the rest of them. It took her a moment to form a response. “Orson Krennic killed my father,” she said softly. “And Galen Erso let it happen.”

( _Stardust, you’re the light of my life_.)

It was easier to think of it that way, and in a way, it was more true than the truth.

“I'm sorry,” Cassian said, after a moment, and she shook her head, swallowing hard.

“Don’t take it personally,” she replied, pushing forward again, to where she might not be so transparent, “but I don’t really want your sympathy.”

She caught up to Bodhi, who was perceptive enough to see that she was troubled, but kind enough to let it go with no more than a questioning glance. Even Bodhi didn’t know about Galen; as far as he knew, Jyn’s father had died either before or during their flight from Coruscant. Lyra had brought Jyn and Mya into Aldera under her family name, reconnected with her parents, and never said a word about her husband or the father of her children.

 _It isn’t safe, love_ , she had told Jyn, when they were still new to the city, staying in her grandparents’ house where the three of them had to share a bed. _Papa had to stay so we could be safe. Once things settle down, he’ll join us._

Lyra had died believing that Galen would slip the Empire’s grasp as soon as possible and return to his family.

Jyn didn’t know if he was evil or just a coward, nor which was worse.

Leia led them down to where the pathway ended, at the base of a tomb in front of a large, smooth-faced marble wall _—_  in contrast to the rest of the structure, which was reddish sandstone _—_  flanked by two braziers set into the floor with high, blue-white flames climbing up the wall, taller than all of their heads.

The effect was striking: Princess Leia, all in white, wearing her hair as a makeshift crown, standing in the star-white fire with her hand against the marble, reflecting the flickering light. 

A bright golden line appeared in the center of the stone, and the wall split to open into the Queen’s chamber beyond.

The marble room was lit by two blue-white flames in stone bowls on either side of the alabaster sarcophagus in the center, which had a raised relief of the Dynast-Queen on the lid; in her stone hands was a very real sword, which had a rose-colored jewel set into the hilt.

“This your kyber crystal?” Han asked, and Leia walked over, touching it reverently but then frowning.

“No…” she said slowly. “But I would have thought…”

“If that’s not it, then where is it?” Draven asked.

Jyn walked around the room slowly, inspecting the walls: they were all the same smooth-faced marble as the door, but around the edges was an intricately-carved frieze detailing what looked like some sort of war involving supernatural creatures. In the center of the panel opposite the door was the image of a woman either falling or leaping, with a pale blue stone held in her outstretched hand.

“Leia,” she said, glancing behind her; Leia looked up, gave a small gasp of surprise, and then joined her, stepping forward with her hand outstretched to take it.

And then something was there.

It was like a hunter materializing out of camouflage: the light shifted just a little, shadows took on a different shape, edges she’d thought were behind suddenly appeared in the foreground, and something that had been there the whole time suddenly had a form _—_  a person, spun out of the flickering pale blue light reflected by the marble walls.

Once the shape settled in her vision, the recognition struck her like an arrow, and she gasped, stepping backward and nearly stumbling into the sarcophagus.

“Mya?” she breathed, but Bodhi, beside her, made a sound of confusion. 

“What?” 

She didn’t dare look away _—_  it was Mya, just like the last time Jyn had _really_ seen her, before she’d left for that last mission, standing in front of the princess, holding the stone out in her hand. From where Leia’s eyes were, she was seeing the apparition, too; she took the crystal in a bit of a daze, and the figure began to walk around her and make for the exit.

Leia turned to watch it leave; Jyn reached out to grab her sister’s arm, but her hand went straight through it, and Mya walked out of the room, sparing Jyn only a faint smile.

No one else had turned _—_  in fact, they were all looking around in confusion now, from Leia to Jyn and back.

“Your Majesty?” Draven asked, and Leia looked down at the stone, then at Jyn. She seemed about to speak for a moment, before blinking rapidly and shaking her head.

“We have the stone,” she said quietly. “Let’s go.”

The others walked out, but Jyn stayed rooted to the spot, staring at her hand and trying to convince herself she’d felt _anything —_  a brush of wind, a whisper of air resistance, anything at all to suggest that it had been real and not all in her head _—_  when Mya had walked right through her fingers. Bodhi touched her shoulder.

“Jyn?” he asked, and she jumped. “What happened? What did you see?”

She looked at him, and then out the door, to meet Leia’s eyes on the other side of the threshold; the princess looked just as confused and unsettled as Jyn felt.

“I…” she started, then shook her head. “I don’t know. Let’s just go. We’ve got a long walk back to the ship.”

The walk back up to the surface seemed to pass quicker than the way down; Han and Bodhi held some kind of inane conversation behind Jyn that seemed to be more to fill the silence than anything else, with the occasional grunt from Chewie and off-hand comment from Draven. The atmosphere was strange and tense _—_  everyone knew that something had happened in the tomb, but neither Jyn nor Leia were talking about it. 

Why had Mya’s ghost been in Dynast-Queen Silara’s tomb?

 _Had_ it been Mya’s ghost? Now that it wasn’t in front of her, Jyn was less sure that the apparition had been her sister. She couldn’t think of any reason that Mya’s spirit would be here, unless it had something to do with the kyber crystal… but Mya hadn’t spent as much time with the crystals in Galen’s study as Jyn had, she was always attached to Lyra’s hip, going with their mother to the church of the Force and learning about mysticism and spiritualism with the few Jedi that had remained in Coruscant.

 _Magic is the stone but the Force is in the bone_ , Luke had said, but kyber was connected to the Force. Lyra had been a believer in the Force, and through her both Mya and Jyn had some background in the church, but neither of them had been very devout. Maybe you didn’t have to be, if you were in the right place at the right time?

It didn’t feel right. It wasn’t adding up.

Mya was dead, burned to ash and scattered on the river Nebra; by now, the elements that had made up her sister were in the ocean, in the air, in the heartbeats of distant animals. Mya couldn’t be here.

But if it hadn’t been Mya, what _had_ it been?

“Let us go first,” Cassian said, startling her out of her reverie; they were at the doors already, and he had his bow out, an arrow already nocked. “Aim for the wings, if possible, to bring it out of the air.” 

 _Right_ , she thought distantly, _the bird_.

At Cassian’s nod, Chewie pushed the doors open and backed out of them, turning with his crossbow raised, but  _—_

The giant bird was dead, laying on the ground, its brilliant golden wings already faded, covered in a thin layer of dust; it looked like it had been killed by large-caliber bullets, as if from  _—_

“How did they find us?” Leia asked, as the same time that Han, in deep offence, cried, “How did they _get_ here?”  

Leia first turned to Cassian, but he looked just as shocked as the rest of them at the small Imperial fleet circling and beginning to set down on the parade ground in front of the tomb.

Jyn’s mind snapped out of the daze she’d been in, into damage control mode: the tomb was _highly_ defensible, built into the rock, and if there was magic here, it would favor Leia. There was probably a back way out, and if not they had the tools to make one, although it wouldn’t be pleasant; she wasn’t familiar with the landscape this far west, but Han was, and they weren’t too far from Corellia, anyway, whose leaders would be very interested in giving asylum to the deposed princess of Alderaan.

It wasn’t a _great_ plan, but it would hold water. 

“If we get back into the tomb, we can barricade the doors _—_ ” she started, but was cut off by… Draven.

“No.”

Leia went rigid, and Cassian turned sharply.

“Your Majesty, listen to me,” Draven said fervently, taking a step forward, but Leia was frozen in place, eyes wide and fixed on the Imperial craft setting down in front of her, spilling stormtroopers out to surround them. “Judge Piett is willing to work with us, Luke spoke with him on your behalf. This is the answer I spoke of.”

Leia hardly seemed to be breathing, even as a minor judge took her by the arm and led them onto the little ship.

“You told them where we were going?” Jyn snarled, and he at least had the presence to flinch a little at her tone. She wrenched her arm away from the stormtrooper who was trying to drag her onto the ship for transport. “You bloody _traitor!_ How dare _—_ ” she was cut off by three troopers shoving her forward, where she staggered against Cassian, who was wearing a nearly-identical expression to Leia’s, although muted. 

Jyn was halfway back to her feet to fight _—_  although who or what she intended to fight wasn’t even clear to her _—_  when Han caught her.

“Stop fighting, Jyn,” he said urgently. “They don’t need you, they’ll just kill you. Pick your battles.”

The doors closed behind them, and the tomb and the sandsea fell away, and they were, again, in the Empire’s hands.

.

“Ah, Princess Leia,” Judge Piett said, turning as they were led, again, to the bridge of Piett’s light cruiser. “Such a tremendous honor to meet with you again. You left so quickly last time that I feared we caused offense.” 

He had removed his helmet to speak with them, and while Cassian was not by nature a violent man, and had spent many years mastering self-restraint besides, he desperately wanted to punch the judge right across the smug, sanctimonious little smile he was giving them.

“Such a heartfelt display of remorse,” Leia hissed. “What is it you want _now?_ ” 

“The kyber crystal,” he replied, and Leia tilted her chin up in defiance.

“You already have it,” she snapped, and Piett let out a little laugh.

“We already have _a_ crystal, Majesty,” he said, placing a hand on the hilt of his sword. “It has already been passed on to Doctor Erso for research _—_ ” he went on; Cassian felt Jyn flinch beside him and resisted the urge to reach out and touch her “ _—_ but it is only a small fragment. I’m told the crystal held in Silara’s tomb was far more powerful.”

“You’re told,” she repeated, her voice hoarse and thick. She didn’t look at Draven, but Cassian did; the General looked grave, almost remorseful. Davits Draven had always been a loyal soldier, much like Cassian, although he had always been willing to get his hands dirty in defense of the throne.

To Draven, allying with the Empire to restore the throne wasn’t unreasonable: he would work with anyone to fulfill his duty, from thieves and murderers to royalty or old Jedi. He would betray anyone, too _—_  from what Cassian knew of the man, he guessed that to be his intention: ally with the Empire to return Leia to her throne, then turn around and cast them out from a more defensible position.

It both was and wasn’t a betrayal, but Leia would certainly consider it one, and Draven was a fool if he thought she wouldn't.

“They have offered us a treaty,” Draven explained, stepping forward. Leia didn’t turn. “The Empire has agreed to _—_ ”

“In exchange for the kyber crystal,” Piett explained, speaking over Draven and holding out a hand, “the Empire will restore Alderaan, and the Princess Leia to her throne.”

“As your allies,” Han interjected, crossing his arms and glaring at the Judge. “Pet royalty for Vader and ol’ Palpy up there in Coruscant.”

Piett laughed, in a teeth-clenched sort of way, and drew his sword, aiming for Han’s neck; Han didn’t flinch, although Leia did. The sword stopped when it touched his skin. “You quibble with your ambitions, Majesty, at the cost of their lives. The impudent sky pirate will be the first to fall.”

Leia looked at Han, then at the stone, and, face twisted in anger, stepped forward and held out her hand.

“Leia, don’t _—_ ” Han started, but she’d already handed it over. As she stepped back, she said, half to Han and half the floor:

“ _Now_ a rock is worth more than your life?”

He started to say something, but Piett was louder.

“Excellent,” the Judge declared, withdrawing his sword and holding the glowing crystal up. “We shall make with all haste back to Aldera. The Princess Leia and her entourage are to be treated with the utmost respect,” he added, as stormtroopers led them off the bridge.

Coming out of someone else’s mouth, it might have sounded sincere, but to Cassian, it sounded more like a sentencing.

“Luke is the key,” Draven said, as soon as the doors closed behind them. “He’s more than willing to work with us, and has the power to give us the support we need. We can trust him.”

Cassian cringed internally; he didn’t look back to see what Leia was doing, nor did he really need to. After a long pause, the Princess said, in a waspish voice: “Who are you to speak of trust?” 

“A son of Alderaan,” he insisted. “We’ve been fighting on our own for two years, it hasn’t gotten us anywhere. This is how we return you to your throne, and from there begin restoring Alderaan.”

“On _their_ terms,” Leia replied coldly. “As a puppet ruler. I would rather die.”

“Majesty, if you continue to fight them, you will,” he countered, and Cassian resisted the urge to shake his head. Draven had a lot of skills, but handling an angry Leia didn't appear to be one of them. “It’s time to be reasonable. I know it’s hard to understand _—_ ”

“No, it’s not,” Jyn cut in harshly, and Cassian glanced at her to see fire in her eyes and her hands clenched into fists. “You weighed what she was worth to you, and decided it wasn’t enough. I’ve known men like you before. There’s always some excuse, why the easiest thing for them to do was conveniently always the right one. You can burn in hell, too.”

 _Too_. In spite of everything else going on, the word made its way into the little file in his head: kyber crystal, Eadu Laboratory, a connection to the Princess that no one knew anything about, and now _I’ve known men like you before._ There was a thread here, laid bare, but Cassian wasn’t sure if he dared pull on it.

( _Orson Krennic killed my father and Galen Erso let it happen._ He wondered what exactly that meant.)

“I did what was necessary for my country,” Draven hissed, but Jyn only scoffed.

“No, you did what was easiest for _you_ , without thinking of the consequences.”

“I have _always_ thought of the consequences.” 

“Oh?” she challenged, finally turning and facing him, breathing harsh and heavy. “And what makes you think they’ll keep their word? You just gave them a weapon to destroy the country, and you think they’ll just agree to put her back on her throne?”

Draven started to respond, but the ship suddenly rocked, hard enough to knock Leia and almost Jyn off their feet; Han helped Leia stand, looking around in alarm. 

“The hell was that?” he asked, but not even Draven seemed to know.

 _You gave them a weapon to destroy the country —_  surely they weren’t foolish enough to _test_ it? He looked around, and met Jyn’s eyes, wide and round, as her face drained of blood.

“We have to get out of here,” he said urgently.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as an aside, since it's referenced but never directly explained, "your majesty" is the proper title only for a king and queen, whereas "your highness" is the appropriate title for a princess. because she hasn't been crowned, it's actually inaccurate to refer to leia as "your majesty" but the characters do out of deference to the fact that she is the sole heir and rightful queen.


End file.
